


London's Third Eye

by Boxxer



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Original Character - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-08-10 17:09:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 28,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7853782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boxxer/pseuds/Boxxer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based heavily on the novel "Leaving Time" by Jodi Picoult.</p><p>Across London, homeless men are being found dead under mysterious circumstances-- but with no suspects and very few clues, Sherlock Holmes and his new flatmate, John Watson, are having trouble finding answers. The last thing either of them thought they'd ever do was enlist the help of an ex-psychic, but you know what they say: desperate cases call for extreme methods.</p><p>My wonderful, insightful, and patient beta can be found on AO3 at JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle</p><p>Find me on tumblr at homeosapphic.tumblr.com</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**SHERLOCK**

There exists in some parts of the modern world a fascinating psychological phenomenon known as Cotard’s syndrome. Characteristics of the illness include psychosis, intense delusions, depersonalization, and the unshakeable belief that you are dead—a walking corpse with rotting flesh, decaying or missing organs, and mood swings comparable to those of the supposed living. Popular cases include a Scotsman who, upon being brought to South Africa to recover, was convinced by the heat that he had borrowed his sleeping mother’s spirit to show him around hell; an elderly woman in 1778 who felt a single draft of wind and immediately insisted that her family wrap her in a shroud, place her in a coffin, and mourn over her body; a French woman who believed she was immortal despite her easily disprovable claims that her body was devoid of all major organs; and a man who believed he had died of poisoning and been turned into a dog, along with his wife and three children, whom he claimed had become sheep. I shouldn’t have to mention that none of these people were actually dead—or immortal, the belief in which is a more popular side effect than one would usually assume with a short-term psychological illness—however, their faith in their own deceased-ness was strong enough to convince many of them that they were ghosts.

All of this leads me to wonder: if the living can be so firmly persuaded falsely of their own death, who can ever say for sure that they’re alive?

As a child I once pondered this aloud to Mycroft, my elder brother by seven years, and he boxed me on the ear. _Did you feel that?_ He said. _Of course you’re alive._

Considering that I’d been so young when I began my research on human psychology such as this, it should not have been a surprise to anyone when, a decade later, I turned up at my parents’ doorstep, strung out on whatever drug I’d had a taste for at the time—cocaine, I’m sure, though I’ve since blocked it out or blurred it under a hundred other memories of a thousand other nights. Once I learned how to say the right thing, it was always easy to find someone willing to share their stash.

For them, getting high was about becoming numb, but I did it to feel more alive.

**JOHN**

I was never supposed to be on the front line.

Here’s the thing: I was an army doctor. A doctor. A medic. Close to combat, but not directly involved. Trained with the soldiers, but never fighting alongside them. I don’t know how long I was out after the bomb hit but I know it was a long time, because when I woke up I was in a hospital in Birmingham, with rain trickling down the tall windows instead of hot sun cementing my uniform to my body like I’d become so accustomed to.

The last thing I remember about Afghanistan is the silence that comes before the war explodes around you; it only lasts a fraction of a second, not nearly long enough to be noticed by anyone without an army-trained ear. I was one of the guys unlucky enough to know it was coming. Somehow, the front line had been pushed back too quickly for us to get the message to bug out, so when the artillery shells started hitting our post-op tent we had two choices: leave the patients too injured to be moved and get ourselves on the European side of the line again, or do our best to keep operating and hope our boys could push them back. Three of us chose to stay. We never blamed the rest for retreating. For a while, we kept it up. A couple abdomen wounds, three or four bullet-shattered limbs, a few eyes or ears or fingers lost to shrapnel. Some dead on arrival. We were close enough to the front line that the soldiers were dropping their boys outside the hospital tent and running back out toward the battle.

Then, almost all at once, we _were_ the front line.

At first it was a line of bullets spraying across the tent, shredding the canvas. One tore through my current patient’s IV bag. I lunged for the bucket of supplies one of the other medics had dragged over, but in the next breath a second round ripped through the patient's chest, blooming ribbons of dark blood into his uniform. A soldier ran into the tent—some kid, couldn’t have been more than 20—and yelled for us to leave. Get out, grab our belongings, get as far down the road as possible. Two or three dozen boot-clad feet pounded by outside. Part of the unit stopped to grab their wounded, sliding hefty arms around their waists or slinging them across their shoulders like hunted deer. The kid yelled wildly at us one last time before wiping his nose, smearing the sweat and dirt across his barely-there mustache, and retreating with them.

When we could no longer hear the footsteps, we were alone with the dead. Pockets of cloudy dirt dotted the air, clearing slowly in the slight breeze. The medic next to me heaved, falling to his hands and knees and retching onto the dirt. Our third companion began stuffing medical supplies into a knapsack. _We gotta go!_ he said. His boot slid in a puddle of vomit and he crashed to his knees.

And there it was: the still air, the heavy tinting of the sunlight, the silence so oppressive that it stole my breath. The searing whistle of a bomb. The ground erupting.

I had never felt more alive.

I had never been so close to death.

Next thing I knew, I was in a hospital bed. I wasn’t sure where I was at first, but it was raining and I heard the unmistakable whine of a double decker bus—definitely England. I moved to press the button to alert the nurse’s station, and my entire left side jolted with pain. I must have screamed because the nurses came running, at least three of them. One adjusted a bag hanging from an IV that dripped a line into my unbandage hand, one adjusted my injured arm, and one leaned down so close to my face that I could smell the tea she must have been drinking. _John?_ she said. _John? Are you alright?_

The next few weeks made me feel like a puppet in a show; I had been shot, apparently, with a bullet that ripped ragged through my left shoulder. I rented out an apartment, some little hovel in a crumbling part of the city, and spent most nights shoving a wadded sock into my mouth so I wouldn’t scare the neighbors with my screams when I dreamt of Afghanistan. The pain in my arm was so bad I could barely dress myself or take out the garbage without biting my lip so hard it bled. The apartment began to smell like body odor and old gauze. The army had set me up with a therapist, some woman named Ella. I convinced myself I didn’t need her, didn’t need to talk about Afghanistan, didn’t want to be readjusted to society yet—and I believed it until the night I had to lock my handgun in the bedside table and put the key on the other side of the small apartment so I wouldn’t be tempted to put an end to the constant mundanity and motion of my post-war life.

I never wanted pity. I never wanted to be considered “broken.” As far as I was concerned, I was a regular ex-army man, a doctor temporarily out of work. Ella told me I was lucky to be alive. My neighbor told me I was lucky to be alive. The cashier at the grocery, who saw me every week at the same time, told me I was lucky to be alive.

I don’t think they understood the goddamn definition.


	2. Chapter 2

**SHERLOCK**

I’ve always known I have an impeccable memory and eye for detail. Logic, that’s what I’m good at, and reasoning. The depth of undeniable fact grounds me. Often when I was younger and the boys in school lashed out at me for knowing more about them than they were comfortable with, I would retreat into my mind and run through unsolved legal cases from the news, or that Mycroft invented for me. In truth, and I’d never admit this to him lest he mistake it for sentiment, he was the only other child, although he was much older, with whom I had any connection during my youth. I never desired to spend time with the others. Mycroft, too, had his difficulties in making friends. The curse of the Holmes brothers, mummy always said.

As a result, we relied on each other. It wasn’t so much a doting brothership as it was a constant competition with mutual gain.

“Hey, watch it!” A portly woman with two handfuls of grocery bags stumbled over the curb as I lurched into the street. Behind me, she huffed angrily, but whatever insult she almost definitely tossed my way was drowned out by my loud whistle as I waved down a cab. Inside, it stank of roast beef—a hot sandwich eaten within the last half hour. He’d smeared spicy mustard and mayonnaise on the wheel. “Address?”

“Barnet. The hippodrome.”

From within my pocket, my phone chimed twice, two texts from Lestrade. _Are you coming? –GL_ and _Two witnesses, both minors. Be mindful of their age when you question them. They're fragile. –GL_

_**Solved the Kaminsky case? –SH**_

_Sent someone to follow the lead. –GL_

_**The lead won’t talk to a male officer. –SH**_

_Why didn’t you tell me that earlier? –GL_

_If my officers are wasting their time on your lead they’ll have my head. -GL_

_WHERE ARE YOU? –GL_

“Do stop texting me, I’m here. Tell me about the witnesses.”

With a sigh of frustration, Lestrade regarded me. “Two kids. Well, teens. They broke in last night to watch some movie, something by director…” he consulted his notepad. “Harrison Marks.”

“Naked as nature intended.”

“What?”

“The title. This building was featured in a scene involving a very naked actress. An impressively juvenile adventure. Where are they?”

“Just inside, on a bench. They’re quite a bit shocked, Sherlock, so be gentle!” He had to yell the end of his sentence as I was already making my way up to the building’s entrance, and I extended a moment of courtesy and waved my hand over my shoulder to signal I’d heard.

Inside the building, it was drafty. As I approached the two teens I gauged them; fifteen, the darker one maybe sixteen, both looking like they’d been slapped, turning simultaneously to regard me when I walked up to the bench upon which they’d been sat. “Names?”

“Uh…” the shorter one spoke first. “Sam. This is Nadia.”

“Sherlock Holmes. Tell me about last night.”

“Well, we was in here—“

“Were.”

“Right. We were in here to watch that movie, you know? The one that’s got this place in it? Boring as shit but the ladies in it got really big—“ he cut himself off, clearing his throat. “Right. My cousin said he used to come here with all his friends once a year to watch it, Nadia and me was just trying to keep the tradition—“

“Skip the details.”

“Uh. Okay. So Nadia set up the projector and I got the sheet rigged up, and while we was—“

“Were.”

“—waiting for the projector to warm up, we went to explore a bit. We didn’t get far before we smelled…” Sam’s eyes flicked across the dim, dusty room to the sheet-covered body and he shuddered. “I musta blacked right out or what, next I knew I was on the phone with the police.”

Completely unhelpful, although I respected Lestrade’s advice and refrained from stating so aloud. “Nadia, what happened in that time?”

“They won’t answer, Mr. Holmes. They’re still pretty shook up.”

“Shaken.”

“Yeah.”

I bit the tip of my tongue at his empty tone. “That’s all?” He nodded. From over my shoulder I heard Lestrade’s unmistakable footsteps drawing closer. I turned and met him halfway. “Why did you bring me here? They know nothing.”

“Figured you might want to talk to them.”

“I reiterate: they know nothing.” My nose tickled, a cold coming on or a drippy reaction to the chilly interior of the building. “Get some water for the older one.”

Lestrade crossed his arms and smiled, tongue in cheek. “Oh, suddenly you’re Mr. Compassionate?”

“They’re sweating from nerves, they need to hydrate. Get them a bottle of water, preferably room temperature.”

“They? Both?”

“Sam is scared but stable. It’s for Nadia.”

“Should we take her to a hospital?”

“They, not she.”

“Right, they. Hospital?”

“No. Water. The nerves will wear off.”

He passed the message to one of his officers, and grabbed another one writing intently on a pocket-sized notepad. “Bring them outside, into the sun. Did you get in contact with their parents?”

The officer shook her head. “Not yet, we’re working on it.”

With a terse nod, Lestrade grasped my hand and squeezed it. “Thanks.”

“This was a waste of time. A simple dead body is hardly worth a call. Can't your department handle insignificant cases like this?”

Lestrade clicked his tongue in irritation. “Jesus, Sherlock, have a heart! This was the third dead body we've found within a month. Seems to warrant some outside advice. Besides, it’s always nice, you actually showing up when I call,” he finished so sarcastically that I felt the beginnings of a smile prick the skin under my eyes.

I had paid the cabbie to wait for me, and he was napping with his forehead against the wheel when I made it back to the car. I slid into the backseat and slammed the door firmly. He roused with a snort, a thick and textured red curve across his forehead—the imprint of the steering wheel. “Baker Street,” I said.

“Same place I picked you up?”

“Please.”

We pulled away from the overgrown curb. The cabbie yawned. I sniffed to itch my nose.

Deep within my pocket, my phone chimed its usual ringtone. I fished it out and slid the green bar across the screen. “Mike.”

_“Sherlock! Glad you answered! Listen, will you be at Bart’s today? I’ve got someone I think you’ll wanna meet.”_

**CLARITY**

The first thing my latest customer said to me when he walked into the small living-room-turned-shop in my tiny apartment was, “So. Clarity. Kind of a funny name for a psychic, huh?”

“Mhmm.” I hummed flatly. (Read: it’s not funny at all, and you’re the third customer today who’s mentioned it.) “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll brew some tea. Chamomile?”

“Sounds great!”

Here’s the thing: almost every customer who comes to me for readings or advice brings up the name thing. After a couple months in this business, I finally stopped telling them the story; of course Clarity isn’t my real name, but when your mother is an avid drug user who spent more time being found in hovels by the police than being a parent, you don’t exactly jump at the idea of being named after her. I was a young psychic, one who recognized my abilities years earlier than most, and I started calling myself Clarity because I thought it sounded pretty. As soon as I was old enough, I stuck with it and made it legal. Why ruin a brand, right?

And yes, I recognize the fucking irony. That’s the whole point of the name.

I’m almost exclusively a loose-leaf drinker, more for its aesthetic appeal for the sake of my customers than any of that goes-too-far New Age medicine bullshit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one to stifle someone else’s belief system—you won’t run into many psychics who actively oppose any religion. Believe what you want, but don’t scoff at me when I choose I Love Lemon over a more homeopathic lavender-rose concoction.

But customers like it when I act a little witchy.

“Tea’s up!” I parted a tapestry in the doorway, one which served to separate my office from the rest of my residence, and stepped through. The guy was sitting in a chair and I must have surprised him because he yanked his hand back from my scrying mirror (a cheap but useful DIY one of my girlfriends had told me about when I was a teen back in America). I kept the smiled plastered on my face and tried not to let my nostrils flare in anger, a tell I loathed. That mirror had been with me through everything, and even if I hadn’t been able to use it as more than a simple table decoration in years, I’d be devastated if it were broken. Sentiment, and all that.

The first few minutes of the appointment went as smoothly as ever, an old welcome-to-the-psychic’s-den, here’s-the-general-agenda-and-etiquette routine I’d had memorized for so long I’m shocked it doesn’t put me to sleep. It’s practiced and old, but I’ve always enjoyed the customers’ expressions. It’s like the reality of seeing a psychic for help finally hits them, pa-chow! That’s the make-or-break moment: either they run for the door, or the golden glow of curiosity and fascination keeps them locked to their chairs.

After the intro bit, I really got into character.

We were sat across from each other, both of us with closed eyes (or, in my case, squinted eyes), my palms against the backs of his hands so I could wrap my thumb over his wrist and place them gently over his pulse. With an exaggerated inhale, I began crafting the story. “I’m seeing a letter… maybe a P, or a B?” (Read: give me something to go off.)

His forehead crinkled. “I had a great-grandfather named Pearce.”

“Yes, yes, I’m seeing a man’s face. He wants to send you a message, something he badly needs to tell you.”

I felt his pulse jump in his wrist. “About my grandmother?” he asked excitedly, and I spoke over him to say, “He wants to tell you something about a woman.” That doesn’t work on every customer, the “I was just about to say it right as you said it” trick, but when his face lit up at my words I knew I’d nailed a gullible one. I continued carefully. “He’s saying her name but I can’t quite make it out. There’s an L… or maybe an O…”

“Claudette!” he practically shouted. “There’s an L in Claudette!”

I bit back a satisfied grin. “He’s trying to tell me something important. Is there a question you’re trying to resolve? Something you wanted to ask him about your grandmother?" (Read: I need you to give me the answers. I’m throwing out blanks. Any minute now, you might realize I’m dragging you in bullshit.)

(Read: I haven’t successfully communicated with a spirit in years.)

**JOHN**

People always tell me, “It must be so nice to be back in London, back in the peace and quiet.” Nice? Peaceful? At least when I was in the service, if I was set off by a loud noise it was justified. At least over there, I wasn’t alone. Now, I would give up all the quiet in the world for twenty minutes of peace inside my head.

The cane, at least, stops people from staring.

My apartment is stifling. Not in the sense that’s it’s cramped, although there was that; every night when I lay in bed, I can feel my breaths slowly getting slower and slower, further and further apart, until I swear I’m not even breathing at all. I can’t sleep. When I do, the dreams wake me up in minutes anyway. Screaming. Sweating. Heart stuttering violently in my neck, my wrists, clogging my throat until I choke. Last week, I locked my gun in a cabinet on the other side of the apartment so I would stop getting up to look at it. I haven’t told my therapist about that yet.

Rather than let myself suffer inside that tiny box, I’ve taken to going for walks. I got tired easily but there was a great park nearby with comfortable benches. It was there that I was sitting, letting a scalding cardboard coffee cool on my knee, when someone sat down next to me.

“John! Good to see you!”

It took a moment, but then, “Mike! Mike Stamford, of course. How have you been?”

“Fine, fine. Busy. How’s everything with you? I heard you were abroad somewhere, getting shot at. What happened?”

I tapped my cane and almost as if sentient, the bullet-wound in my left shoulder twinged. “I got shot,” I said simply.

The color drained out of Mike’s face. “Oh, ah… I’m. I’m sorry,” he stammered, but I forced a smile. “It’s alright. Readjusting is hard, but.” I let it hang, unsure what else I could possibly say.

“Where are you living?”

“Just up the street, actually. Yeah. Small place, a bit too small for my taste, but I can’t afford a better space. Not on my pension.” Even in my ears, my laughter sounded flat. Mike’s expression gave away that it sounded the same to him.

“Could you afford to split the rent with someone?”

“Depends on the place. Doesn’t really matter though, who’d want me for a flatmate?” I said. Who’d want to be woken up eight times a night by my inability to control the images looping in my mind, I thought.

Mike chuckled. “You know, you’re the second person to say that to me today.”

“Who was the first?”

“A good friend of mine, Sherlock Holmes.”

“Hmm.” I sipped my coffee.

“Well?” Mike leaned forward to catch my gaze.

“Well what?”

“Do you want to meet him?”

I chewed my lip. Considering my only other option was to spend the rest of my days alternating between reliving the war in my dreams and spending my waking time wishing I’d died over there, living with a complete stranger didn’t sound so bad. Might be nice to have another body around, at least. No way anybody would tolerate my nightly behaviors, but at least a cab ride with Mike would get me beyond the square mile in which I had been trapped since I got back.

“Why not,” I said, hauling myself up with my cane. “Let’s go meet this Sherlock Holmes.”


	3. Chapter 3

**CLARITY**  
If you wanted to know all about my life and career, it wouldn’t be difficult to find information. You could search through newspaper articles, internet databases, books about otherworldly realms and their explorers. I’m in many of the modern editions. Hell, I even have a Wikipedia page! You’d be able to find a full timeline of my life as a psychic, and you might even believe in me or be impressed by me—that is, until you find out what happened in 2009.

Getting to that day, though, is a long story.

When I started out, I called myself a witch. I didn’t attach myself to any Pagan gods or goddesses like most of the other young witches I befriended, but I was willing to try anything they recommended. I learned how to smudge, and then learned that I shouldn’t. I learned how to recognize my _chakras_ , and then learned the cultural necessity of calling them _energy points_ instead.

As it turns out, a huge part of discovering the extent of my powers was learning what _not_ to do.

My greatest achievement in those days was meeting my spirit guides. I had two: Ruth, a grandmotherly wise-ass who spent more time being sarcastic than serious, and Hiram, a shy dark-skinned teenaged boy from the early 1800s. It took me ages to meet them, and even longer to learn how to effectively request their help when I needed it. Eventually, I only had to call out to them in my mind and they would join me.

Being led by spirit guides was always an extreme exercise in trust. I couldn’t quite see their forms perfectly clearly, as some psychics claim, and the things they told me felt more like intuitive tugs than actual sentences spoken to me in my mind. I would ask a question, or call upon them to help me access their dimension, and they would usually answer simultaneously. When I meditated, I pictured myself holding their hands, and they would lead me to a place of tranquility. When a client asked after a dead relative or a lost item, my guides would bounce around the spirit world until they found a clue.

For a while, I was famous. I had my face on magazine covers, authors and journalists were constantly knocking down my door for interviews, and there was such a large increase in clientele that I had to rent a space downtown for a new, bigger office. Even so, my fame was more for the small-town enthusiasts than the general public; but everything finally came together when I went on Oprah. Suddenly, an essential aspect of my job became aesthetics and theatrics.

My specialty was finding lost people, or at least finding out what happened to them. A case like that narrows down to three possible options: the person is lost on purpose and has no intent or desire to be found, the person is lost without their own intending and is being prevented (either by circumstances or another person) from being found, or the person is dead. Whenever someone came to me asking for help, I always hoped their loved one would be found alive.

Oprah asked me to be on her show because a kid had gone missing; some politician’s son, a young teen with a short record, who’d been reported missing nearly a month prior. Police hadn’t been able to recover any solid leads, so the boy’s mother had convinced her husband to seek out psychic help. Hollywood had caught wind of it (always slutting themselves up for a scandal) and bada-bing-bada-boom, Oprah was on my answering machine requesting my presence and prescience on her show. All-expense-paid trip, a week in a fancy hotel while I worked, and promises of more money and recognition than I had ever dreamed of. Her plan was to do a rare week-long series, airing the episodes live so her audience would know no one was editing the tapes.

The night before my premiere on the show, I destroyed my entire career. I tried for hours to meditate in my hotel room, even requesting a CD player from the front desk so I could put on my most effective musical selections, but although I could feel Hiram and Ruth’s presences, they wouldn’t say a word to me. Naturally I pushed them. _Where are you? Why aren’t you answering me? I need you now more than ever. You owe it to me! It’s your responsibility to guide me!_ and all that. Finally, Hiram responded, _You’re losing respect_ , and Ruth snapped snidely, _Don’t forget your place!_

“Fine!” I said out loud through gritted teeth. “I don’t need your goddamn help anyway!”

That night, I went to bed angry, and when I woke up the next morning I tried my hardest to apologize. The entire time I prepped for the show, I called out to them. In the cab on the way to the studio, I pleaded with them to answer. I even lit a candle backstage as a last-ditch attempt at communication. Nothing. Not a peep. The night before Oprah was the last time I heard from them.

The first show was just a meeting, so I could ask the family questions on-air and they could get to know me. I did a basic reading on both of them, something I’d been doing since I was a teen, until they and the audience were transfixed—maybe not full believers, but willing to give me the slight benefit of the doubt. For the second show, we went off-site into the politician’s home. Oprah spent most of the filming time holding photographs of the boy and screwing her face up sadly, but the politician’s wife followed me around the house, pointing out which objects belonged to her son. I made a show of holding his shirts or shoes and humming in what I hoped was a knowing manner; meanwhile, I was calling out desperately to Hiram and Ruth, begging them to come back. They didn’t answer, but a different spirit did, another elderly woman who tipped me off about a locker at a nearby train station. That was all she gave me—a station name, a locker number, and a combination. I figured finding whatever small clue was hidden there would be better than nothing, so I took the lead. 

We got on a bus immediately, leaving the studio audience gasping at our sudden departure. A few choice members (read: celebrities) were selected to join us. The film crew wanted everyone’s reactions to be genuine but I, of course, played it up, entering the station dramatically, spending a few extra seconds running my fingers over the locker numbers so the cameras would be able to sweep the audience up in anticipation, and then feigning excitement when I spotted the correct one. Not that I wasn’t excited, but I was pretty sure I was running on a lousy tip from a bum spirit.

Then the police chief opened the locker, and the thick stink of death flooded over us.

Watching live, the audience saw this: the cameraman stumbled sideways and vomited on his shoes. I did the same, doubling over next to the lockers and falling on my hands in a puddle of my own sick. The politician’s wife fainted clear to the ground. Her husband, next to her, swayed woozily but stayed up, his face and neck drained of color. For a few shocking seconds, the camera jolted around the scene, then hit the floor and cracked, slowly going black while the police chief yelled into his radio in a panicked tone.

Even in the haze of confusion and shock, I made a vow to myself: never again would I take on a missing person’s case. Sometimes the unsolved ones were better off as mysteries.

**JOHN**

As much as I hated to admit it, especially to someone who threw off as smug a vibe as Sherlock did, I was intrigued by him. Before I had even really known that we’d been discussing the prospect of sharing a flat, it seemed I had agreed to the arrangement. The place was a good size, at least, and once his belongings and . . . _experiments_ , as he called them, were either organized or thrown away, it would do very nicely.

“John.” I’d been standing outside on Baker Street for only a minute or two, considering how to move myself from my current accommodations to my new place, when Sherlock stepped out onto the sidewalk behind me. Mrs. Hudson closed the door after him, winking to me with an amused grin. “I have the names of three people who will help you move. I’ve contacted them already.”

“Ah, I was just thinking how I’d get my things here.”

He smirked. “Yes, I figured. The cane, no car, Mike’s the only friend you’ve seen yet. I figured you wouldn’t have many prospects. They’ll be over later today.”

“Your friends?”

“My contacts,” he said with a quirked eyebrow. Ah. There it was. With just one look, he’d made me feel like an idiot. Granted I’d only known him for a short time, but I could already tell he had a knack for that.

“That’s an odd way to put it,” I muttered, and he spoke over me to say, “They’ll ask you for payment. They might even harass you, test the waters. Don’t give them anything.”

“Why?”

“They’re all Cheats. Criminals, technically.”

“You’re sending criminals to my flat?! To handle my things?!”

“Relax, John. I hardly believe you have much in the way of valuables.”

“Well, yes, but. That doesn’t mean I want criminals in my flat.”

“They were petty crimes. Drug charges, minor assaults.”

“Assaults?!”

He rolled his eyes. “ _Minor_ assaults. I don’t have time to explain each charge to you. They will be over later, and you’ll be moved into Baker Street by morning.”

The ridiculousness of the situation hit me like a breeze, and a curt laugh pushed out of my throat. Sherlock’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “It’s just, ahh . . .” despite myself, I chuckled. “I just can’t believe we’re about to be flatmates. Practical strangers. Sharing a flat.” He didn’t laugh. If anything, his confused gaze intensified. “Seems like material for a sitcom,” I ended flatly. When his reaction didn’t change, I cleared my throat. “Right. I’ll see you later then?”

“Later then,” he repeated, and whistled for a cab. One pulled up and he gestured with a swoop of his arm for me to take it. I told the cabbie the address and as we pulled into traffic, a police car came to rest at the curb in front of Sherlock.

**SHERLOCK**

As the car taking John back to his flat to gather his belongings merged with traffic and rolled away, a police car pulled into the newly vacant spot. As usual, Lestrade climbed out of his car “in a tizzy,” as Mrs. Hudson always so colorfully called it. Two more police cars turned onto Baker Street and pulled into empty spots, but left their engines on. In a rush, then. They had somewhere to be. “What is it?” I asked as Lestrade approached. He’d left his car door open—ready to jump back in and go to the scene of . . . whatever he was here for.

“Another body. Homeless man.”

“Where?”

“A small park a few miles south.”

“A homeless man found dead in a park, and you expect me to take the case? Why? Surely the Yard can handle something as simple as this.”

“It looks like it was done the same way as the Barnet murder.”

I scoffed. “I wouldn’t know, would I? You wouldn’t let me near the body in Barnet. Or in the morgue, or in--”

Lestrade sighed loudly. “Will you come? I know it’s a slow week, Mrs. Hudson says she’s never heard you play the violin so much. I need your . . . interpersonal skills. The woman who found the body won’t give us anything.”

“Fine. You have me for an hour. I have a new flatmate and he’ll be moving in tonight.”

To my joy, Lestrade’s brows shot up in surprise. “You found a flatmate? How?” He cleared his throat. “I mean . . . good for you. Where did you meet him?”

“Mike introduced us. Are you going to take me to the crime scene?”

“Oh, right. I’m just a little surprised. I never thought you’d find someone to agree to live there. He _has_ seen your flat, right?”

“I’ll take a cab.”

“No, sorry, we’re going. We’re going!”

The ride was ghastly slow. With the practically overwhelming whirring of Lestrade's mind next to me, I couldn’t filter through my thoughts properly. I shushed him loudly more than once but my focus was still scattered; when we arrived at the park, I was already irritated 

One of Lestrade’s subordinates approached him hastily. “I thought I recognized her,” she whispered excitedly, “so I ran a quick search of her name. That’s Clarity Cavanaugh!”

“Who?” said Lestrade, echoing my thoughts.

“Clarity Cavanaugh! She’s that psychic from Oprah! She accidentally helped that politician and his wife find their dead kid, about six or seven years ago? Remember?”

Lestrade nodded. “Mmm, vaguely. Well, having a psychic on the case ought to make this easier!” he joked.

“I don’t believe in psychics,” I said shortly. “Smoke and mirrors will never replace biological facts and physics.”

They both ignored me. “Where is she?” asked Lestrade, and the other officer pointed in the direction of a shadowy cutaway in the trees before slinking off to spread the news of the celebrity among the others.

As we approached, even I was startled by the scene. A woman sat on the bank of a shallow stream, her hands cuffed tightly behind her back and her bare feet in the water. An almost perfectly-round circle of white stones surrounded each foot. She wore a long green dress, which had been tied up between her knees so it looked like a pair of loose shorts, and a bright yellow jacket with purple flowers was draped over her shoulders. Her hair was pinned on top of her head with a branch, which still had shiny green leaves attached to the end, indicating that she’d recently broken it from a tree. She was a blast of color and texture but even as we stared at her, she swayed her head and hummed something in a minor scale.

“Why is she cuffed?” murmured Lestrade to one of his nearby officers.

“She fought us pretty hard, sir. Punched Miller in the face. Said she didn’t want to be involved. Wouldn’t even give us her name.”

“Jesus.” Lestrade sucked a deep breath between his teeth. “All right. Clarity Cavanaugh?” he asked cautiously, stepping down the short bank and stopping a few feet behind her. She ceased her humming but didn’t move otherwise. “We need to ask you some questions, and we can’t let you go until you answer them as truthfully as you can.”

“I’m not saying anything.” Her voice was lower and rougher than I expected for such a twiggish woman, and she had a thickly American accent. “I don’t know anything. I’m not getting involved with any murder cases.”

“We just need you to tell us what you saw when you got here.”

“No!” she spat. “As soon as I start answering questions, I’m part of the investigation!”

"You're _already_ part of the investigation." When she didn't respond, Lestrade rubbed the arch of his nose and said to me, “Sherlock, maybe you can get her to talk.”

Instantly, Clarity’s head snapped around and she shot a burning look into my eyes. “Sherlock? Sherlock Holmes?” When I nodded tersely, she turned her back to me again and shifted her feet in the water, sending dozens of even ripples off the curve of her ankles.

“Heard of him?” asked Lestrade amusedly.

“Oh yes,” she said, with enough bite to pique my curiosity. “I’ve definitely heard of him. If you thought I was radio silent before, you can bet your skinny white ass I’m not saying anything now.”

Turning to look at me with the smuggest grin he could manage, Lestrade crossed his arms. “Well,” he said, the tone of his voice bordering nearly on a laugh. “Interested _now_ , aren’t you?”


	4. Chapter 4

**CLARITY**

Here’s how it happened.

I was out for a barefoot walk in a local park, something I did a few times a week to reconnect myself with the soil and grass. I’d been in that particular park many times, taken both by how comparatively small it was and by the fact that it wasn’t filled with playgrounds, benches, pavement, or picnic tables. This one was all about trees, grass, and flowers—and, as I discovered while I was wandering along a line of proud oaks, a small stream which wound away from the well-worn park path and worked its way through a small but thick grouping of trees before circling back. The stones in its bed were round, smooth, and colored multitudinously—perfect for helping me ground myself even more in nature’s comforting patterns, or the peaceful lack thereof.

With barely a hesitation (and even then, only a niggling concern for disrupting any stream-life living un-chaotically in my path) I stepped into the water. It was shockingly cold, chilling my toes and causing them to scrunch up of their own accord. Stones slipped under the arches of my feet. I nearly lost my balance once, and then again, but with some maneuvering of my arms I stayed upright. “Oho,” I chortled out loud, unable to stop myself from exclaiming at the small victory. A little ways down the stream, a branch caught against a rock tossed itself up and down so that its still-green oak leaves clapped the water like a breathless reply to my voice.

Most of my interaction with nature was force of habit and a source of familiarity. Sure, I had once been able to rely fairly steadily on spell jars and crystals to aid me in my interdimensional exploits, and sure, I had once used age-old grounding techniques to prepare my body and mind for the strain of transporting energy across planes, but since I’d lost my guides, I hadn’t been able to manage any of that for even a simple psychic procedure.

It was as if I’d had a telephone line to “the other side” for which the wire had been cut; I could still press all the right buttons, but it wouldn’t make a connection.

But I pressed the buttons anyway. I made spell jars, kept my crystals by a window that allowed them to bathe in moonlight, lit specific candles for the “psychic readings” I held in my apartment, and continued my nature walks. I no longer gathered any psychic energy from these practices, but they centered me in my own mind, at least. Besides, there was nothing like a small adventure into an un-city-like part of the city to remind myself that concrete, brick, and blacktop were temporary. Nature always overcomes.

Standing in the river, I pulled out an old ritual I hadn’t even thought of in years: using the elements and the four cardinal directions to create a direct line of energy which came out of the sky and straight through the ground, with me as its central axis. I stood facing the east, where the sun was still on the rising side, and imagined a beam of fire going through the top of my head and out of the bottoms of my feet. I faced the north, from which the refreshing winds blow, and imagined a funnel of air aligning with the fire. I turned to the west, and let my feet slide past the rocks to sink shallowly into the mud as I imagined a beam of earth’s maternal energy joining the other two. Finally, I faced the south, to where far-off the river connected to the sea, and—

And . . .

And something on the water caught my eye, distracting me. It was shiny and small, but nearly blinding with its angle against the late morning sun. I shook myself loose from the ritual and squelched my toes out of the mud.

As I swashed upstream to investigate, a peculiar smell penetrated my nostrils—sickeningly thick, almost sweet, not very unlike the medicinal mushrooms I’d once grown in a rotting log back in America. When the sun shifted I was able to see it was a circular object, a plain O that revealed itself to be quite fancy when I crouched low by the pile of fallen branches in which it had become caught. A pocket watch; white-faced, no doubt gold-plated, with small swords for hands. It was broken. The putrid smell was stronger here so I peered through the sticks, curious, and immediately fell backwards into the water with the burning sensation of bile filling my throat.

In the middle of the branches an arm was sticking up at an odd angle, bloated and molding, and disjointed from the rest of the body, which was submerged under the water. It had been hidden completely from view until I’d crouched directly next to it, and from where I’d fallen when I’d stumbled back, it was hidden again. I breathed erratically, trying to quash the nausea, and suddenly remembered why the sickening smell had been so familiar; it wasn’t quite the smell of the mushrooms I’d only managed to acquire once—it was amplified by the fear and adrenaline coursing throughout my body, increasing every sense until I couldn’t help but smell and taste it. It was mystery, the stomach-turning kind that even psychics hope to avoid. Flesh, rotting into a fetid nest for the river-bugs, overwhelming the air with its stench.

It was death, and I’d only smelled it that clearly once before—at the end of my professional career, when the police had opened the locker in that train station and found that little boy stuffed into a suitcase.

**LESTRADE**

I swear, Sherlock has this one look that would send poison-tipped arrows through both my eyes if it were physically possible. Unfortunately I found myself on the receiving end of that very look at least once a day. Today it was for my admittedly smug comment— _“Interested now, aren’t you?”_ —which I’d only said on impulse. I had barely been able to get Sherlock to take any cases for weeks! Having finally convinced him that this one was potentially worthy of his time, I was extremely satisfied to be made aware of that fact that not only did the absurd woman in the stream already know about Sherlock Holmes, but that she was even less impressed with him than was most of my staff!

Confusion trickled into my thoughts, interrupting my internal gloating. “Sorry, how do you know about Sherlock?”

The woman laughed. “Ha! How could I not? Calls himself a genius, but doesn’t give any credit where it’s due.” From her seat on the ground, she physically twitched with irritation. “Its people like him who give all of us a bad reputation in the other dimensions.”

“All of whom?” Sherlock asked, just as I said, “Other dimensions?”

She glared over her shoulder. “Psychics. And yes,” she said pointedly to me, full of hostile reservation as if she were prepared to be challenged. “Other dimensions.”

Sherlock raised his eyebrows at me. Shit. Of course she’d be off the deep end. To his credit, though, he barely rolled his eyes as he addressed her. Barely. “Sorry, Ms…”

“Clarity.”

“Ms. Clarity.”

“Nope, just Clarity.”

He appeared outwardly to ignore her snippiness, although I had watched him interact with enough belligerent people over the years to know that the flattening of the line of his mouth meant he was annoyed. “All right,” he said curtly. “Where is the credit due?”

“Huh?”

With an impatient huff he said, “You accuse me of not giving any where it’s due. So where is it due?”

“The spirits.”

There was a long pause, broken only when he said, “The . . . spirits.” To me he muttered, “She doesn’t need a detective. She needs a psychiatrist.”

“Come on, Sherlock. Give her the benefit of the doubt. Who knows, maybe she’s telling the truth!”

“The truth.”

“Maybe!”

“That she’s a psychic?”

“With perfectly fine hearing,” she said loudly, interrupting us. “I don’t expect you to subscribe to my belief system off the bat, but I’m sure you can refrain from being a douche.”

Despite the tension of the whole situation, I couldn’t prevent a snort from escaping. “A douche? I haven’t heard that one in years.”

Clarity shrugged. “It’s still big in the states.” Moving carefully so as not to slip, she stood. “Look. I’m not trying to obstruct justice or whatever, but I’ve had my share of media coverage in my lifetime, and I made a vow that I’d stay out of anything big. I don’t want to get involved.”

“Of course not,” I said in what I hoped was a sympathetic tone.

“I don’t know anything.”

“We’re not saying you do—but right now, yours is the only perspective we’ve got. We just need you to fill in the timeline leading up to your finding the body.” _And you resisting this much is damn suspicious_ , I didn’t say. As she struggled to shake the excess water off her feet, I realized she was still cuffed. “Want me to unlock those?”

“Please.”

When the handcuffs were off and secured in my pocket, she rubbed her wrists. “Thanks.” She brushed the dirt off her bottom and re-knotted her hair with the same twiggy stick. The bright jacket which had been draped over her shoulders, she now tied in a knot around her waist. I couldn’t help but notice her toned shoulders and full hips . . . but I shook my head to clear my mind. The station to which my train of thought was heading had no place in a murder investigation.

Sherlock tapped his foot impatiently while she cleaned up as best as she could. His flat shoes sent small splashes of mud spritzing out like a fan. “Finished?” 

“Mhm,” she said smartly. I extended a hand to help her climb up the short bank, but she shoved past with pursed lips. Reaching the top and gesturing exaggeratedly toward that path leading back to the cars, she said, “Well? Let’s get this over with.”

**JOHN**

I was more than a little surprised to arrive back at my cramped flat to find four people already there, with the door wide open and nearly half my belongings packed into boxes. “How…?” I wondered aloud as I circled the space, barely even drawing the attention of the small group who had busied themselves packing in my absence. I didn’t think Sherlock had had time to call anyone in yet. In fact, I hadn’t even given Sherlock a key! I shook my head. “Never mind. Are you Sherlock’s friends?”

“Friends, he says,” laughed one of them, who was dragging my bed across the floor. It made a low whine as it scratched the cheap wood.

“Acquaintances, then. That stays here,” I said, pointing to the bed, and the woman dropped it with a shrug right where it was.

Speaking to my landlord about moving was much easier than expected; although, to be fair, the place was run-down enough that he was probably pleased whenever any of his tenants made it out of there without dying of asbestos poisoning first. Within an hour it was all arranged. “Will you need any help moving?” he asked, and I sheepishly divulged that the process was nearly complete—a statement made untrue by the time we’d finished talking; when I made it back up to my flat, it was completely cleaned out. I sat on the stripped bed, mentally exhausted from the day’s excitement.

From within my pocket, my phone chimed.

_Come to the morgue. Need a doctor’s opinion on a body.–SH_

_I’m packing. –JW_

_The people I sent should have finished already. If not, they can make do without you. –SH_

_I should head to Baker Street and get moved in. –JW_

_It will be easier if I’m there. I won’t be back until after dinner. –SH_

_Fine. Which morgue? –JW_

He texted me a few short details about the location. In the cab on the way there, I realized it was the first few moments of relative silence I’d had since meeting the man. I’d known him for such a short time and he’d already paraded me around his flat amidst an array of body parts and books, sent a slew of strangers into my place to pack my personal belongings, and now he had me heading over to a morgue to assist in his examination of a body—I hadn’t even dared ask yet where the body came from. My cab sped through the streets, winding surprisingly smoothly around the other cars. As we pulled up to the curb out front of the main entrance to the morgue, I sent another text before pocketing my phone, paying the cabbie, and rushing inside.

_Mike, what the hell have you gotten me into? -JW_


	5. Chapter 5

**SHERLOCK**

“So?”

“Dead.”

“Obviously. What else?”

“Looks like it’s been . . . 30 days?”

“I’d say 10 or 12. Water expedites the process.”

“Right. Eugh, it’s moldy.”

“Sound analysis, doctor.”

At my words, John dropped the corner of the plastic covering which he had peeled back to reveal the white kaleidoscope patches on the body’s arms. He crossed his own arms and glared. “Don’t patronize me.” I met his eyes and responded evenly, “Don’t give me information worthy of it.” He huffed and turned his head away, a common act of defiance. Disappointingly common, in fact. In recognition of his apparent irritability and my own desire to quickly move forward with the case, I forced myself to pander. “You’ve seen your share of bodies. Don’t just tell me what you see, tell me what you deduce.”

There was a long pause, no more than ten seconds, but given our current location and the quite penetrating scent emanating from the body between us, it seemed as if time slowed and the quiet moments stretched into eternity; in fact, I was on the verge of breaking the silence myself and informing this Doctor Watson that I’d changed my mind when he finally spoke. “Fine. But you don’t get to talk while I’m . . . _deducing_.”

He began with the head, which was swollen nearly to the point of inhumanity. With a grimace he probed at the ears, the eyes, the nose, and slid the mouth open. “Not many teeth,” he muttered, an observation which I didn’t even honor with a response. Next, he examined the body’s chest and shoulders—I personally would have gone with the feet, but as I had been ordered into quietude, I held my tongue. After uttering a few indistinguishable noises, John moved onto the fingers, then the abdomen, then the thighs and knees, then back to the head for a quick feel of the spinal column at the back of the neck before he finally moved to the feet. I waited impatiently for him to notice the unusually high tan-line along the upper ankles. However, he merely frowned and straightened with a short, “Yeah.”

“So?” I asked for the second time.

“I’m no expert with bodies. I’m a doctor, not a mortician.” He sighed. “But it appears as if this was a man, in his sixties or seventies, most likely homeless judging from his clothing and hair, clearly alone if he’s been missing for over a week without anyone looking for him. I can’t tell if he was sick before he died. No trauma to the head or abdomen, no signs of poisoning, no apparent gunshot wounds. Neck broken post-mortem.” When he finished, he shrugged.

“What of his watch?”

“What watch?” he asked, taking my bait. I procured my phone from my pocket and unlocked it; a photograph I’d taken at the scene, unbeknownst to Lestrade—he disproved of such things— was already up when the lockscreen cleared. Much to my pleasure he took the phone from my hands and squinted to peer more closely at its detail.

“Can it zoom in?”

I reached over his arm and pinched the screen with my fingers to grab the picture, then spread them so the face of the watch took up the entire screen. 

“Maybe it was a keepsake? Family heirloom?” He paused. “Hang on, is that . . . ?”

“Hmm?”

He tapped the screen, sending the picture swooping back into its original position, and I helped him zoom again so he could point to a particular blurry spot on the watch. If neither of us had been familiar with that particular design, we certainly would not have been able to distinguish what it was from this one hastily-taken picture alone. “I think that’s the army crest,” he continued, and I responded gleefully, “I believe you’re quite right!” Despite the nauseating smell in the room, and the body quite literally melting between us, and the fact that the deceased man’s having potentially been a soldier could very well be a dead-end in the overall case, I felt myself grinning widely.

There was hope for Doctor Watson yet.

**JOHN**

_“And then he ran off?”_

“Right out of the morgue. It took me a couple of minutes to get up the stairs because of . . . well.”

_“The cane?”_

“Right. When I got to the street he was gone.”

_“What did you do?”_

“I went to Baker Street.”

Dead air buzzed between us. Then the other person whispered gleefully, _“Oh my god. Are you there right now? Alone?!”_

Harry always did have a flair for the dramatic. I sat in the living room, perched on one end of the couch. “Well,” I responded, leaning forward to peer into the kitchen. “Not exactly alone.” Mrs. Hudson buzzed around the table and counters, tutting and huffing every time she came across something disgusting. She’d brought tea up when she heard my cane rapping the floor as I rearranged my belongings. When she saw the state of the flat, she’d told me to sit and wait for her to straighten up. “The landlady’s here,” I muttered into the phone.

_“Is she cute?”_

“She’s—Harry!”

_“What, John? A girl can dream, right?”_ She chuckled to herself. _“Besides, you know… I’ve. I’ve stopped drinking.”_ We both let the declaration hang between us. At least once a year for the last—god, who knows how long?—Harry had called me and sworn the same promise: I’ve stopped drinking. So far, it hadn’t stuck.

“That’s great!” I said, hating how flat the words sounded even to me.

_“I really have this time!”_

“I know.” I didn’t. “Listen, we’ll have to get together to celebrate, but right now I have to go. I want to finish settling in tonight.”

_“Of course. Good luck with the new flatmate. I love you.”_

“Mmm. Goodnight, Harry.” I tossed the phone onto the table and rubbed the exhaustion out of my face; it had been one of the longest days I’d had since being sent back home. From the kitchen Mrs. Hudson called out, “Who’s Harry, dear?” She appeared in the doorway, elbow-deep in latex gloves, her hair falling out of its formerly neat bun, and a smear of what I hoped was jam on her chin. “Your boyfriend?”

“What? No!”

“Oh, don’t be shy, we’ve got all sorts around here. Just up the street there’s a—“

“Harry is my sister,” I interrupted, not particularly wanting to find out what sort of person lived up the street. “Harriet.”

At that, Mrs. Hudson practically melted. “What a lovely name!” She headed back into the kitchen, clanging the dishes about, as she continued. “You know, a while back I read that book by James Herriot, the one with the animals? I got it on loan from young Mr. Humphrey down the road. Oh, what was it called? Something something creatures. I could never be a veterinarian. Mind you, it wouldn’t be the blood that put me off, but the customers! Bringing in their prize-winning poodles and purebred cats. One of my girlfriends from America had an awful cat, a terrible pinch-faced thing that used to spit all day long, spit at everyone who came near it! It was a pity when it ran away and drowned in a river, or at least I told her it was a pity, though to be truthful I was just happy I could finally visit her without needing to wear an extra layer of trousers—“

Just as I was preparing to escape from the flat and the rest of the story, the door was thrown open and Sherlock strode in. His nose was buried in his phone. “Hello, John.”  


“Hello.” I stood with some difficulty. My leg was always worse after a phone call with Harry. Despite my annoyance at his abrupt disappearance earlier, I tried to sound casual. “Where did you get off to?”

He tapped out a few last words and tucked his phone into his jacket. “Chiswick.”

That threw me. “What were you doing in Chiswick?”

“Had to visit a friend.”

Something liquid spilled in the kitchen, sloshing across the floor and causing Mrs. Hudson to shriek. Immediately, Sherlock narrowed his eyes at me. “What is she doing in there?” he hissed, darting past me before I had a chance to answer. “No, no, no!” he yelled when he reached the kitchen. As I approached, the thick smell of formaldehyde saturated the air. I couldn’t prevent an “Oof” from escaping me. I covered my nose with my sleeve, but it didn’t do much to stop the smell.

Mrs. Hudson stood by an open cupboard. At her feet were a shattered jar, a thin puddle of liquid, and a small collection of what looked like wrinkly human fingers. “Why do you have jars of formaldehyde?!” She screeched.

“How else would I preserve the fingers?” said Sherlock, grabbing two spoons from a drawer and scooping them up delicately. He deposited them onto a pile of plates which were stacked on the table. Each one rolled lopsided like a pickle before coming to a rest.

“Why do you have jars of fingers?!”

“Why do I do anything, Mrs. Hudson? It’s an experiment!”

“I’ve seen some things in this flat, Sherlock, but this really is too much!” She tore off the latex gloves and stepped over the puddle of fluid as angrily as she could without getting any on her shoes.

“John,” said Sherlock when she’d left and slammed the door closed behind her, “You must promise to never tell her about the brain in the freezer.”

“What? You have a brain? In the freezer?”

“Oh, do relax. It’s a sheep’s brain.”

With that, I’d had enough excitement for the day. I threw my hands up in defeat. “I’m going to bed,” I announced.

“Will you help me get the fingers into a new jar?” Sherlock asked, turning in his squatted position to face me, a finger gripped tightly between his spoons.

“I’m. Going. To bed.” I said again. Slowly. Deliberately. Four boxes still remained packed, and I hadn’t yet filled my wardrobe or dresser with my clothes, and the bathroom was void of any of my toiletries. Despite all of this I made my way to my new bedroom, hoping I’d wake up the next morning without the smell of formaldehyde infiltrating the entire flat.

Baker Street, day one.

**SHERLOCK**

After John had gone to bed, I finished cleaning the mess Mrs. Hudson had made on the kitchen tiles; the smell of the formaldehyde was overwhelming, so I filled bowls with vinegar and placed them around the flat. The windows I opened despite the early-autumn chill in the air. I myself was never offended by chemical smells, especially ones used so popularly in medical or scientific practices, but over the years of living in various places rented out by ordinary people such as Mrs. Hudson, I’d learned how to quickly and effectively dissipate any remaining olfactory reminders of experiments gone wrong. My own brother, Mycroft, had been the one to teach me about vinegar bowls and proper ventilation as a remedy for formaldehyde—we’d still been punished by mummy when she’d found the dead frogs in the garage, but it had taken her over three weeks to discover them, even after my dog had knocked one of the jars over and filled the entire room with the nearly suffocating fumes.

Looking around the flat, I took note of what he and Mrs. Hudson had moved: the two armchairs remained in their spots although they were now devoid of papers, whatever oblong object had been lying on the floor by the fireplace had been moved judging by the light ring of dust outlining where it had once been, the books I’d left organized roughly in stacks across the floor had been slotted back into the bookcase, and my good friend Billy the Skull had been relocated from his perch atop the television set to the corner of the mantle, facing the wall. My desk, however, had been left completely untouched. The last time Mrs. Hudson had tried to organize it for me, she’d lost one of my files and an international druglord had managed to flee the country uncaught.

Chiswick had been more than a visit to a friend; immediately following the discovery of the body in Barnet, I’d put out a tip in my network of homeless people to find the identification of the dead man. One of my cohorts in Chiswick thought she had found something important in relation to the case. It was most likely another dead end. However, I’d taken her information anyway—over a hundred names of missing people who fit the age, location, and physical profile of the Barnet body. It took me less than half an hour to transfer all the names into an excel sheet. An abundance of information is nearly always preferably to too little.

I pulled out my phone to look at the picture of the watch, and cursed myself inwardly for not taking a clearer photograph. It was just blurry enough and just bright enough that most of the gold detail was lost in the background. The potential-army-crest-shaped logo wouldn’t come into focus, no matter how hard I willed it to do so. Finally I gave up in frustration and tossed my phone away. It bounced off the couch and clattered onto the floor.

Restless, I pulled my laptop toward me on the table. I clicked open the browser and typed, _Clarity Cavanaugh psychic_ into the search bar. Every result on the first page was her. _Clarity Cavanaugh Strikes Again! Local Psychic Hits Hollywood_ was the title of the first article, from some celebrity website. Next was _Scandal on Oprah!_ followed by _Psychics and Tele-Stars: When Believing in the Hype becomes Dangerous_. The fourth link, however, caught my eye. It was a blog post, dated from 2008. _Clarity Cavanaugh, the Real Deal: How a Psychic Visit Changed My Life_. I clicked it open and began to read.

Certain words and phrases popped out at me as I skimmed the page: _genius, savior, comforting personality, genuine concern, told me things I hadn’t told anybody, helped me find a sister I didn’t know I had._ In the comments section was a man who’d posted a link to his own blog post, much of which spouted the same sentiments: _changed my life, helped me find the confidence to pursue a new career, as if she spoke to my very soul._ Another person had commented on his post with yet another blog—this one, however, described in detail a séance that Clarity had held for her and her cousins. The writer certainly seemed convinced of Clarity’s talents, and judging from the dozens of assenting comments, so did her readers.

Well, _most_ of her readers, since I was technically to be counted among them.

I read post after post, article after article, each one sending me deeper into the online psychic community. Hours passed. Finally I landed on the transcript from 2005, when she had still lived in America. She’d been interviewed by some local paper about her newly-opened business, selling small psychic items and running readings out of her apartment. The opening paragraph advertised palm readings, tarot, pendulum communication, and one-on-one séances. From there, it got more and more bizarre.  


_TOM: “So Clarity, tell us how you found your abilities.”_

_CLARITY: “That’s not how it works. Your abilities make themselves known to you, and you can choose to either work with them or fight against them.”_

_TOM: “Are you saying that not anyone can be a psychic?”_

_CLARITY: “Of course not. It’s something you’re born with and you learn to cultivate. Some people can fake the life very well, though! We have a special name for fake psychics who prey on gullible people: **[CENSORED]** ”_

_TOM: “Woah! Ha ha! Remember, we gotta keep it G-rated for the magazine! So tell me, how do you spot a fake psychic?”_

_CLARITY: “You can bet that anyone with an 800 number isn’t the real deal. Anyone who tries to put a curse or a hex on you probably isn’t genuine either, although I’ve met some witches in my day who could really work that kind of energy. The best way to tell if a psychic is real is to see how you feel around them. If your instincts are telling you to run, you should probably cut the appointment short.”_

_TOM: “Now, you’ve recently come under some serious scrutiny from a group of scientists who want to discredit your claims to divine power. What do you wish to tell the nay-sayers?”_

_CLARITY: “Well Tom, unfortunately, anyone who is determined not to believe in psychic abilities can’t be easily convinced. Half the power comes from belief. For example, I use crystals and candles during some of my rituals; if I didn’t believe the crystal was actually being charged with energy, it wouldn’t work. If I didn’t believe the color of the candle would change what type of spirit I was attempting to contact, then my color choices would be ineffective. If you don’t believe in the power, then the power won’t work for you. Most people who claim to be geniuses or prodigies actually rely on aid from the spirit world in their pursuits and talents, but they refuse to acknowledge the help they’re given. Imagine how much more powerful Einstein or Beethoven would have been if they’d fully embraced the supernatural energies that gave them their abilities.”_

_TOM: “So you believe Einstein and Beethoven were puppets of the spirit world?”_

_CLARITY: “Not puppets, no. We’re not paraded around like marionettes with some invisible hand. It’s more like having a travel dictionary from another dimension; you can get by in a foreign country, and even succeed, by merely learning the language as you hear it every day—but isn’t it so much smoother to know you can always look up a word or phrase? That’s what it’s like having a connection to the spirit world. I know as long as I keep that connection open and strong, I’ll never be lost.”_

I closed the laptop with more emphasis than I intended. The television remote lay on the table in front of me so I picked it up, setting my computer down in its place, and turned on the set. It blared loudly for a moment, offsetting the unsettling silence that fell religiously at such a late hour, and I hurried to quiet the seemingly cacophonous noise. It sent light flickering across the room with each scene change, and I tucked my feet underneath myself to think. Eventually whatever show was playing on the particular channel I’d landed on faded seamlessly into the background as my inner monologue grew louder, louder, and louder still. My thoughts drowned one another out almost as quickly they made themselves apparent. I attempted to clear my mind, to set aside the unimportant thoughts and file away the ones I wanted to go over later, but they entangled themselves among one another and left me swimming in my own head. The one niggling thought that presented itself over and over was one which, once I gave it my hesitant attention, came into focus and solidified its position in the very front of the queue: before I would be able to move on with this case, I was going to have to prove Clarity Cavanaugh wrong.


	6. Chapter 6

**LESTRADE**

Off to my left, the old wall clock chimed quarter to nine. Outside my office window, one of the men who’d been working in this office for more years even than I had waved goodbye; when he left, I was alone on the floor. Of course, there were secretaries and phone operators and emergency-response teams still at work, but my division firmly believed in being on call so we could all go home at night. I clicked through the forensic photos from the park scene for what must have been the tenth time. Despite all my suspicions that the park death and the Barnet death were related, and that they were related to the three other cases we'd had in the last month, none of us had yet been able to find a lead on any suspects. The case had just been opened, and we were already stumped.

As if on cue, my phone chimed with a text from Sherlock.

_The crest on the watch. Army? –SH_

I leaned in closer to my screen, clicking quickly through the set again. None of the shots had a close enough picture of the watch for me to even see a crest at all. Inwardly I cursed the newly-hired forensics photographer for skipping out on an important detail like that—and I knew that I should be cursing myself too. I knew that the watch had been indexed, so I wearily prepared myself for a quick trip to the evidence room. I was still straightening paperwork into a folder when my personal phone rang. I checked the clock again, frowning, then answered. “Detective Inspector Lestrade.”

 _“Hi. It’s Clarity.”_ A beat. _“Clarity Cavanaugh?”_

“Do you know how late it is?”

_“It’s only 8:45. Still a totally appropriate hour. If I called past nine, then I’d be breaking etiquette.”_

Her dry tone made me smile. “Okay, I’ll allow it.” My tone was more flirtatious than I intended. I coughed. “What’s this about?”

_“Did I leave my jacket at the station earlier? I don’t remember wearing it home.”_

Leaning forward to peer out into the dark office to the desk where she’d given us her timeline that afternoon, I spotted the unmistakable floral pattern draped over a chair. “It’s here.”

_“Shit. Can I get it tomorrow?”_

“Want to get it now? I’ll be here for another hour at least.”

_“Are you working late?”_

“Mhm. Figured I might as well. I—“ I let the word hang. I’d wanted to say, ‘I don’t have anything to go home to,’ but leaking the dirty details of my recently-failed marriage to a near-stranger seemed like a weak ending to an already exhausting day. “I’ll let you in.”

 _“Sure.”_ After a pause, she laughed. _“I’d actually rather be there when it’s empty anyway. I got the impression that none of the officers particularly like me.”_

“No, that’s . . .” Again I trailed off. The phone crackled between us. Finally, Clarity broke the quiet. _“I’ll be there soon.”_

“Right. Good. See you then.” We disconnected.  


When she showed up fifteen minutes later, I was already downstairs to open the door. “Ms. Cavanaugh,” I said formally, and she replied smartly, “Mr. Detective Inspector.”  


We made our way to the office. She picked up her jacket and tied it around her waist, just as she’d done earlier by the river. “Thanks,” she said. Her eyes swept the dark room. “What are you working on so late?”

I attempted my most authoritative tone. “That’s classified.”

“Oh, I’m sorry . . .”

“Erm. I was joking.” Well. Partly joking, anyway. “I’m trying to find a link between the deaths.”

“Deaths? As in more than one?”

“Have you been reading the papers?”

“I try not to. No news is good news, and all that. If I don’t read about the bad things that keep happening, I can pretend they’re not happening.”

“Yeah.” I chuckled. “Sometimes I wish I could take a break from the news, too. We’ve linked this one to a couple of other recent deaths. I was about to head to the evidence room.”

Her eyes brightened. “Can I go?”

“To evidence?”

“I’ve always wanted to see the inner workings of a place like this.”

“That would definitely be against protocol . . .”

She crossed her arms. A challenge. “Anything you took from the river, I’ve already seen. Besides, is it protocol to let me in here after hours?”

For a moment, I considered putting my foot down. Then, with a sigh, I conceded. “Fine. But you can’t touch anything. I mean it! Not a thing.”

She made a big show of raising her right hand and making an X on her chest with the other. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

I laughed. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. I don’t want to deal with the paperwork.”

**CLARITY**

Visiting the evidence room was much, much less glamorous than I’d imagined. It was a rectangular room, completely devoid of decoration, with the unfinished look of a warehouse, and filled to bursting with shelves loaded with boxes. Each box had a wide label on the front. As Lestrade convinced the woman running evidence to let me in, I peered over his shoulder to see how long the room was. He must have charmed his way into a deal because the woman, “Tallulah” apparently, conceded with a smile and a shake of her head. I bounced into the room.

“Hey,” said Lestrade, stopping me as I read a label on one of the boxes nearest to the door. “I’m serious. I can’t have a breach of confidentiality on my hands.”

I rolled my eyes. “Isn’t the point of me being here so I can check it out?”

“I said you could see it, not take intensive inventory.” He pulled a box off the bottom row of the first shelf on the right. A long U-shaped table stood on the left side of the room. He set it down on the far edge, sifting through the various bags within it. “Ah.” He pulled one out and held it up. In it was the watch which I’d seen shining among the sticks in the river. Despite having seen far worse that morning alone, I felt my stomach flip queasily at the mere memory.

“What do you think this is?” he asked, squinting. The inside of the bag was smeared with river gunk that had clung to the watch. I moved closer. There seemed to be an image on the face of the watch, but I couldn’t see it clearly through the dirty plastic. I took the bag from him.

“Easy with the evidence,” he joked as I shook it in an attempt to flip the watch over. I was sure if I could get a closer look, I’d be able to tell what the crest was—and I had to admit that although I wanted nothing more than to separate myself from this case, I was curious. Lestrade’s warning echoed in my ears: You can’t touch anything. When I set it back on the table, he shrugged. “I’ll have to have someone look at it tomorrow.” He patted his pockets, pulling out his phone and stepping over to the door. “Better service here,” he explained to Tallulah, tapping out a message. She nodded knowingly and went back to the book she was reading.

While he was distracted and her back was to me, I reached into the bag—smoothly so as to prevent it from crinkling and alerting him—and took hold of the watch. As soon as I touched the cold metal a sharp jolt went through my arm as if I’d been tazed, and, for the first time in years, images projected themselves in my mind. The slideshow was choppy, blurry, and short. A woman with bleached blonde hair, laughing. A tiny stove with a pot of boiling water perched on one of the burners. A convoy of boxy green-and-black trucks. A wall of dirt above which bright flashes bloomed rapidly against a cranberry sky.

When my mind cleared, I realized I had backed against the wall and was unable to catch my breath. The watch lay on the floor in pieces. The bag which had held it was lying half under the table. Lestrade was standing a few feet from me in a defensive stance, with one hand positioned procedurally over the empty gun holster on his belt and the other held palm-out toward me. “Ms. Cavanaugh?” He said guardedly but loudly. “Clarity? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said between heaving breaths. “Sorry. I’m okay.”

Lestrade relaxed a little in his stance, but his eyes were still wide with caution. “What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” But I did know. I knew exactly what the hell that was. I ran through it again in my mind: woman, stove, trucks, gunfire. Shaking my head to free myself of the slideshow, I took in the evidence room once more: the broken watch, the scattered papers, the cell phone on the floor by the door from when Lestrade must have jumped in surprise. Everything blurred again, but this time because my eyes were filling with tears. They fell heavily from my lashes, splashing onto my cheeks. My nose ran but I didn’t bother to wipe it. I cried freely. I sobbed until my mouth tasted of salt, until each breath felt like a paper shredder tearing at my lungs. Then, it subsided into laughter, hysterical laughter that made me cry harder but with joy rather than shock. My body shook so hard that I let myself sink to the floor so I wouldn’t tip over. Throughout all of this, Lestrade’s look of concern only grew deeper. He stepped forward gingerly and knelt in front of me. “Clarity?” he said again as my laughter subsided into giggles, which slowed to a breathless grin, which finally allowed me to regain control of my inhalations.

I let my head thud lightly against the wall behind me and closed my eyes. “It’s me,” I whispered, almost unable to believe it. “I’m back.”


	7. Chapter 7

**JOHN**

For the third night in a row, I woke in a startled sweat. Shivering. My dreams were… vivid. Still. My therapist had told me it would take a while to work through the terrors. If “a while” meant one more night, it would be too long. 

The clock next to my bed blinked at me. Three in the morning. I lay still, waiting for my heart to settle. Timing my breaths to the clock. Three seconds blinked as I breathed in. Three seconds blinked as I breathed out. Noticing how dry my mouth was, I felt for the cup of water I usually left on my nightstand, but when I found it empty I resigned myself to being awake for the day and kicked the blankets off my legs. Dark circles of sweat stuck my shirt to my front and back. I wiped my face with the hem.

Out in the communal area, a soft thud sounded. Confused, I checked the clock again; yes, 3 a.m. Army instinct threatened to kick in as I stood and pressed my ear to the crack in the door and I dug my fingernails into my palm to suppress it, willing away the years of training. Cautiously, I opened the door and made my way down to the living area.

A light shone from the kitchen into the sitting room, illuminating a mess of books and papers strewn across the couch and table. Amidst the pile on the table, a sharp knife stood upright, the tip of its blade clearly jammed into the wooden table. From the kitchen I heard the same dull thud as before.

“Sherlock?”

As I rounded the corner there was a hurried shuffling. Sherlock was perched on a chair, sitting on the back with his feet on the seat, next to the window. He was wrapped in a bathrobe with both his hands behind his back. The kitchen stank distinctively of cigarettes. I frowned. “Is that . . . are you smoking?”

He didn’t answer.

“Are you smoking?” I repeated. With a shrug of resignation he withdrew one hand from behind his back, pushed the window open, and blew a stream of smoke into the air outside. He also withdrew his other hand, revealing a half-burned cigarette which he tossed out too before pulling the window shut—the source of the thuds, I realized. “Okay,” I said. “So that answers that.”

He sucked a deep breath through his teeth. “It’s a habit.” Loosening and retying the robe’s sash, he stood defiantly. Unwittingly I braced myself opposite him, squaring my shoulders. Another automatic response from training. As I did, he sized me up with a flick of his eyes, then snorted a laugh. “Always a soldier,” he said. I felt a grin tug at the right corner of my mouth. “A habit,” I said, mimicking his earlier words.

There was something new in his gaze, then, something softer than anything I’d previously seen. The muscles of his face relaxed out of their usually tense expression. “Hungry?” he asked. “There’s a 24-hour place around the corner.”

“It’s 3 in the morning!”

“Is that outside the realm of 24 hours?”

I laughed. He smiled. There was an almost consuming energy to him anyway, something that drew the attention of everyone else in whatever space he occupied, but this particular smile felt more intimate than a hug. I coughed. “I should change. You also might want to wear something less . . . bathrobe.” We parted to our respective rooms. Minutes later we met back in the sitting room, I in my casual jeans and a gray t-shirt and he looking equally as comfortable in soft grey sweats, and made our way out onto Baker Street. As we fell into stride next to each other I was puzzled to feel a sense of familiarity with him, almost nostalgic, like going to a café in the dead of night with this man I’d known for such a short time was the most normal activity I could be doing. It was a staggering contrast to the alarming moments after my most recent nightmare. It usually took me hours, if not days, to recover from an episode of terror, and even then it eroded my resilience, making me feel a fraction weaker with each restless night.

I almost didn’t dare let myself recognize it when, walking with him, I felt the gentle tug of the old self I thought I’d lost permanently somewhere in the deserts of Afghanistan.

**SHERLOCK**

“The waitress is having an affair.”

Across from me, John looked up from his glass of orange juice, which he’d been almost compulsively checking for pulp. Not a picky eater, but apparently a picky drinker. He’d participated in the same ritual with his tea yesterday; stirring it slowly with a spoon, checking to see if any leaves floated to the top, before taking a cautious sip. “What?” he asked. His nose crinkled with a mix of confusion and entertainment. “How can you tell?”

I ran through the proof in my mind: she was a young woman, barely out of her teen years, with a wedding ring that was in style half a decade ago. When we’d walked in she’d eyed John far longer than a hostess ought to, and with a look more curious than a disinterested stranger’s. She’d quietly taken a personal phone call after writing down our order; from her tone and the nervous way she glanced at us before ducking into the kitchen it was clearly a lover, but the way she’d absently twisted her ring as she answered the call was almost doubtless confirmation that it was not her husband. I opened my mouth to answer John’s question.

Then I looked at him; the bags under his eyes, his uncombed hair, his shoulders slumped forward in relaxation, sipping his juice at 3 a.m. in a café. Myself for a companion. In this setting he looked so ordinary and for a moment, sitting with him under poor ocher lighting and detecting the barely-noticeable sweet scent of toast being prepared in the kitchen, I felt strangely ordinary too. “Erm. Just a hunch,” I said, trying not to sound disjointed, and he didn’t ask me to elaborate.

When the waitress brought over his toast—four scalene triangles of wheat with a small bowl of raspberry jam on the side—I was almost glad for the interruption. “Anything else?” she asked, although her question was only for John and her eyes sweeping across his shoulders and arms told me that “anything else” wasn’t the question she really wanted to be asking. He shook his head and thanked her. She lingered a moment longer, smiling down at him.

“Thank you,” I said pointedly, catching her attention. As she looked up at me her smile faltered, then returned quickly, though obviously forced. “Let me know if you need anything,” she said, and scurried into the kitchen, pulling her mobile from her pocket as she disappeared through the doorway. When she opened the door the warbling sounds of the chef singing along loudly with the radio and the churning hiss of a sink filling with water spilled out into the dining area.

I watched John scrape jam meticulously onto his toast. Behind him the door jingled as a man entered; broad-chest, oily hair, eyes red and swollen from him rubbing them in exhaustion. He fumbled at the coffee station, filling a large cup and pouring in enough sugar to practically classify the drink as a baked good. He fished a handful of coinage from his pocket, spilled it onto the counter, and left with a rough clearing of his mucous-filled throat.

“So,” said John through a mouthful of food. “You’re a smoker.” Something in my expression must have given a hint of my annoyance because he shook his head quickly and hurried to say, “I’m not criticizing you! I mean, I am a doctor, and I wish I’d known before we moved in together, but . . . well. I guess I didn’t know very much about you at all before I moved in.” He chuckled. Then, realizing he was the only one who found it amusing, he continued, “How often?”

“Only when I’m stuck.”

“Stuck on a case?”

I shrugged. “Or personal matters.”

“Mmm,” he hummed, an agreement. “Relationships?”

“Hardly.”

At this, he frowned. “You don't date?”

“I find it tedious. Besides, my work is both intriguing and time-consuming enough to make a relationship pointless.”

He finished chewing slowly and swallowed. “Pointless.”

“Mmm.”

“Right. Okay. Not the dating type.”

Behind me, the diner clock ticked loudly. “No,” I said slowly. “Not the . . . dating type.” The T sounds clicked sharply in my mouth.

He finished his triangle of toast, and the other three pieces along with it, in record time. When he was finished he washed it down with the juice and settled his hands on his thighs. “Well,” he said, “I guess we should try to get some sleep before morning.” He went to the counter to pay the bill, left a tip apparently generous enough to make the waitress tuck her chin into her neck with a blush, and we left for home.

The flat was dark, or at least as dark as it could be for 4 a.m. on a moon-brightened night. I shrugged out of my jacket and hung it, holding my hand out for his as well, settling it next to mine on the rack. As he moved toward his room I spoke, feeling silly. “I have, though.”

He turned. “Have what?”

“I have dated. In the past. Just, before you go thinking I’m . . . a freak, or something.”

“I don’t.”

“Fine. Good.” I looked away, tapping my toes in my discomfort. “Thanks.”

“You’re thanking me for not thinking you’re a freak? How often do people make that mistake?”

“It’s a . . . common sentiment, shared among many.”

There was a long pause, then John said firmly, “They’re wrong. Granted, I’ve never seen anyone keep fingers in the kitchen, or use a throwing knife for a paperweight, or yell at someone for thinking too loudly.” Even in the darkness, I could see him grin. “If I’d have thought you were a freak, I probably would have run from the morgue when you showed me that body.”

I couldn’t help but join him in grinning. “I’ve been told cadavers are the best ice-breakers.”

My comment sent him into a full-bodied laugh which he tried unsuccessfully to cut short, saying, “Shh! You’ll make me wake Mrs. Hudson!” His laugh was warm, much warmer and more genuine than most laughs that occurred in my presence. As the noise subsided, we were left standing silently in the dark. “So. Good night,” he said stiltedly, and took a few backwards steps toward his bedroom before turning and disappearing up the stairs.

In his sudden absence, I felt like an unconnected jigsaw puzzle. I hurried into my bedroom and closed the door tightly. The three packs of cigarettes I kept hidden there insisted on flashing themselves in the front of my mind; finally, frantically, I withdrew them from under my bed and dumped each tube into a pile on the floor. Kneeling on the ground, I stuck my nose into the pile and breathed deeply. There was a supply of glassware pushed up against the wall by my knee, and from the pile I extracted a large Florence flask. Momentarily I heard one of Mycroft’s more often repeated warnings from my childhood—wear a mask, Sherlock, don’t be an idiot—and repeated aloud the words I’d said to him so many times as a teenager—“Fuck off, Mycroft.”

I fished under the bed for a small chemistry kit I’d had since before university; it had come with no chemicals of real interest, but as I’d added necessary items in my youth I knew it contained at least two that would relieve me of this burdensome desire to smoke until my lungs burned away into sticky charcoals. My hand fumbled the bottles in the kit; one uncorked itself and poured a clear liquid onto the floor. Peroxide. Non-emergency.

I pulled free the two bottles I wanted. Into the flask I carefully funneled one of the liquids, then kept my head clear of the opening before slowly funneling in the other. When the ratio was sufficiently met, I dropped a cigarette into the opening of the flask. It hit the chemicals and shriveled slowly like a drying worm before beginning to bubble and dissolve. As it destroyed itself I dropped in another cigarette, then another, then another, watching each one curl up and disappear until the liquid inside the flask turned a nasty brown color with flecks of tobacco turning the texture swampy. Even after the chemicals stopped reacting, I kept adding cigarettes until all three packs lay empty on my floor. I held the neck of the flask in one hand and swirled it, covering every bit of paper with the chemical concoction, then dug around for a rubber stopper. When it was secured I pushed the flask back under my bed, crumpling the empty boxes and tossing them alongside it.

The first bird of the morning chirped from outside— _Eurasian Wren, Troglodytes troglodytes. Mummy’s favorite songbird_ , I thought. She used to stand by the kitchen window, boiling homemade nectar for the hummingbirds while my childhood dog, Redbeard, begged for a bite of daddy’s eggs.

It was the thought of my dog—the memory of burying my face in Redbeard’s fur while mummy edited one of her books, and of tying an eye patch onto his head so he and I could play pirates with a wooden sword, and of coming home to his comforting presence after one of the other schoolchildren called me a freak or some other rude insult—that finally put me right, and as I closed my eyes tightly and lay back on the floor with my limbs splayed out like a corpse on the dissection table, I welcomed the blanketing familiarity of my old friend’s ghost.


	8. Chapter 8

**CLARITY**

Upon entering my apartment-turned-office, Detective Inspector Lestrade’s first stuttered comment was, “That. That’s a lot. There’s a lot of stuff in here.” It was true; my place was usually cluttered on a normal day, but I’d spent the entire night pulling down old boxes from storage, flipping through my journals from before 2009, and putting all my energy into attempting communication through my scrying mirror. I’d even tried to speak to Ruth and Hiram, although my meditation was only half-hearted. To tell the truth, as much as I regretted my behavior toward them, I was still pretty pissed about their radio silence over these years. I’d still been awake at 5 a.m. when, having taken my cell number the night before when I’d rushed out of the evidence room and practically sprinted home, DI Lestrade had texted me: _Will you be around this morning? What the hell happened last night? –GL_

Within an hour of my response— _I’m awake. Bring coffee?_ —he’d buzzed my door to be let up with two enormous steaming to-go cups. Something in my exhausted and frantic appearance must have startled him, because he had stared at me with an almost scared expression while I sucked down half the cup, scalding my tongue and throat in the process.

Now, I glared at him over the high stack of books in my arms while I weaved across the maze of a room. “Shut up and help me.”

“What are you doing?”

“Cleaning. Organizing. Making room for my serious materials.”

“Serious materials?”

I let the books collapse on an armchair with a soft _whumpf_. “Pendants. Journals. Books.” I gestured my arms in a wide circle. “After last night . . . I know it was a vision. I had almost forgotten what those felt like. But I don’t know what it means, and nothing else is working for me. It’s time to pull out the big guns.” Nodding my chin to the scrying mirror on my table I said, “I tried getting a connection on that all night long. Nada.”

He lifted the mirror off the table. “What is it?”

“Scrying mirror. Erm, how do I explain this? It’s kind of like a visual portal to the spirit world. Any of them can come up to the surface and contact me, or I can reach out to someone specific. Sometimes they answer, or sometimes another spirit has to go get their attention for me.”

“So the mirror is like a telephone operator?”

I snorted. “Sure. Never thought of it like that.”

“Huh. How does it work?”

Trying not to let my annoyance at his questions slip into my tone, I said, “I look into it, and try to look past the actual mirror aspect. Past the colors, the reflections, the glass. If the connection worked, I’ll make contact. I can either see them, or hear them, or they can write on the glass, or they’ll use something else to represent their presence, either something in our realm or theirs. There’s one spirit to whom I used to speak often who would light a candle in the room behind me to let me know she was there.” I’d never been able to procure a name from her, wasn’t even really sure that she was a her, but she’d been a steady presence in my life before 2009. If anyone was like a telephone operator, it was her; the fetcher of souls, I’d once joked, to which she’s responded by steaming up the glass angrily.

It was clear from his expression that he was switching rapidly between awe and doubt at my explanation, but when he flipped the mirror over his face lightened with surprise. “It’s just in a picture frame?”

“What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know. Something more . . . mysterious, I guess.”

I couldn’t keep myself from rolling my eyes. “I made it when I was younger, and I’m a firm believer in keeping things going if they’re working for you. Here.” I handed him a pile of old journals. “Look through these. Put a sticky note on any page that mentions a boy named Hiram. I’m trying to find an entry about a particular conversation he and I had about visions. If you see the words _claircognizant_ or _clairsentient_ , call me over.”

As he plopped down among the clutter to browse, I resumed cleaning. Some of the items I pulled from boxes were so old and musty that they left oily tracks on my hands and shirt or the boxes that held them ripped open when I took them down from their shelves. I never minded must but when I handed a stack of journals from one such molding box to the detective inspector, he grimaced.

The street busied audibly outside over the course of the next few hours, but we worked in silence broken only by the occasional “Here” whenever I unearthed more journals or he found one of the terms I’d mentioned. Occasionally he’d ask me to clarify a word or concept for him, and I’d give him a harried reply.

Then, finally, “Is this it? _Hiram’s advice on unanticipated claircognizant encounters was to keep extensive notes on each encounter, track any potential recurring themes, note my mindset during--_ "

“Yes, yes, that’s it!” I interrupted and dropped the lamp I was holding, an old thing someone had given me in exchange for a simple palm reading. It crashed to the floor and a couple of thick shards spilled across the floor. Lestrade sprang to his feet, letting me rip the journal out of his hands as he went to clean the mess I’d made. “Broom’s in the kitchen,” I said absently, tracing the fading pencil lines of my writing.

_–track any potential recurring themes, note my mindset during the encounter, and leave no detail unexplored. Anything you sense that at first seems impossible is either a cross-wiring of psychic connections, or a symbol. To remember: there is nothing that happens in a vision that can be written off. At some level, they always contain some semblance of reality. Ruth adds that it’s similar to tarot: an image or sound in a vision may be a symbol rather than a literal impression—always search for meaning beyond the obvious._

My client, as it were, was unable to confirm the literal nature of the vision, seeing as he was decaying quickly in a morgue. It was triggered by his watch, which must have been important to him, then. Important enough to contain traces of his soul and memories. After the incident in the evidence room the night before, I’d held the watch again, hoping beyond hope for even a small affirmation from it, but had felt nothing. I re-read Hiram’s words: _To remember: there is nothing that happens in a vision that can be written off. At some level, they always contain some semblance of reality._ “Once you’ve ruled out the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true.” I didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud until Lestrade hummed, “Hmm?”

I looked up at him, tipping back his coffee and draining the last cold sips, and blinked. “Oh. Erm.” Even as I spoke, the words burned themselves across my mind like they were written in kerosene, then faded out in a swirl of pearly smoke. “Nothing.” Truthfully, I had no idea where that particular thought came from. In fact, it defied the entire logic of my profession! During the heyday of my practice, my entire career had revolved around proving to people that the impossible . . . was not. Then I’d spent seven years, since the night a mental block was put between me and my abilities, living in an impossible situation.

Now, sitting with this old advice in my hands and still running off the high of the previous night’s breakthrough, I realized something: yes, if you eliminate the impossible then whatever remains must be the truth, but what if something that at first _seems_ impossible is actually just an intense improbability?

Wouldn’t it make sense, then, that something you’ve already eliminated—for, say, seven years—could turn out to be the truth?

**SHERLOCK**

I woke in the dark on the floor to a knocking sound, my arm numb where it was trapped underneath my ribs. My bedroom door creaked open slightly. “Sherlock?”

“John. Come in.”

He did, a shadow silhouetted against the light from the hallway, and closed the door behind him, leaving us both in the blue tint of pre-dawn.

“Why are you on the floor?” he asked.

Not answering, I pulled myself up and sat on the edge of the mattress. He joined me, the bed compressing and shifting under his weight, the heat of sleepiness emanating from him and warming my arm. I felt myself flush with the recognition of his body so close to mine. “Still can’t sleep?” I asked. He nodded.

“We’ve already been to one diner together. We can’t very well go out again tonight. People will talk.”

Beside me he laughed, an ethereal chuckle. It sounded odd, fake, empty. “Would that be so bad?” he asked, his voice sounding like an echo.

Before I could respond he reached for me, his hand sliding into my hair and massaging the base of my skull. His thumb stroked the skin over my carotid artery. Despite the reservations I had, despite my years of careful separation from the need for physical intimacy, my head pressed into his touch. “Sherlock,” he murmured, leaning forward to press his forehead to my temple, then pressing a kiss to the back of his thumb where it moved across my neck. I could feel his lips, feel his breath, feel his hand gripping my head more tightly as he kissed my jaw. Involuntarily I reached for him, too, taking a fistful of his shirt to pull him closer. He climbed into my lap, straddling me, pushing me down onto the bed. His mouth met mine, not in a full kiss but open, his lips caressing mine, his tongue dipping out to touch mine gently, his breath mingling with the small gasps I couldn’t keep from escaping. With an open-throated hum he moved his hands across my chest, my stomach, tugging at the hem of my shirt and slipping his hands under the fabric to trace circles on my skin. Barely letting his fingers feel me, he stuttered them higher and higher until they both rested on my bare sternum. When I couldn’t take his teasing touch anymore I surged forward, kissing him fully. His nose dug into my cheek as he responded enthusiastically.

“John,” I murmured against his mouth. I was intoxicated. This was better than smoking. Better than drinking. Better, even, than my last high. His hands left tingling tracks on my chest as he dragged them hard over my skin.

“John,” I gasped as he moved his kisses to my jaw, my neck, my collarbone. What good were other people? What good were all the others, if they couldn’t touch me like this? If they couldn’t drag me out of my endless head. I was dragged out, out of my mind, out of my control. Out of the carefully constructed self I’d spent so many years cultivating.

Suddenly, it needed to stop. John . . .needed to _stop!_ I couldn’t lose myself. I couldn’t _lose_ myself!

I shoved him away, breaking his mouth’s connection with my body, and “Wait!” I yelled. Everything around me crackled like a staticky television. On top of me, John’s body glitched, then faded, and I woke with a start on the floor of my bedroom. My heart raced. My throat constricted with breathlessness. A dream, a dream, I thought frantically, scrambling to a sitting position with my back against the wall, eyeing my bedroom door. It stayed closed, blissfully closed, blissfully John-less.

Instinct kicked in and I fell into old habits: taking my pulse (too fast), counting my shallow breaths (too many, too many), taking note of the beads of sweat prickle on my temple and chin.

Shaking, I reached for my phone where it lay next to my bed. I tapped out a message to my brother, then deleted it. Tried again, deleted it. Finally: _I’m thinking about using. –SH_

Despite the early hour my phone buzzed back almost instantly. _I’m sending a car. –MH_

I threw my phone down, shaking my head. I didn’t want to see him, didn’t even know why I’d texted him. I just . . . couldn’t slow down. Couldn’t make it stop. Between the panic I’d been in the previous night and then this overwhelming dream, all I wanted to do was not think, not feel, not _be_ for a couple of hours.

Mycroft must have been expecting something like this because as I made my way silently out of the apartment and slipped into the shadows of a side street, a dark car came speeding down the road and screeched to an abrupt halt in front of Speedy’s. A man leaped out of the driver’s seat, barely able to open the back door before Mycroft himself shoved it open and rushed smoothly into the building. I sniffed, pulled my sweatshirt’s hood over my head, shoved my hands into the pocket across the sweatshirt’s stomach, and loped away down the dark street.


	9. Chapter 9

**JOHN**

Dawn had barely begun to break, and I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, like I’d been doing since Sherlock and I got back from the diner. The previous night had been alarming. Disconcerting. It was the first time I’d felt good, genuinely good, since Afghanistan. For once, I could credit my sleeplessness to confusion rather than terror.

To tell the truth, I was glad I knew about Sherlock’s smoking. It was humanizing. Yes, he was brilliant, and yes, he was incomparably unique, but he had struggles just like anyone. I had even . . . _Jesus_. I had even asked him about his past relationships. As if we’d been on a date.

Flipping my pillow to the cool side, I turned onto my stomach. “You’re a doctor,” my therapist always said. “It’s natural for you to want to help people. Just take your time with it. Don’t jump into anything too quickly.” I hadn’t seen her since moving into Baker Street but I had a feeling she wouldn’t be happy with how “quickly” everything in my life was going. New flat, new friend, and a new hobby, if following Sherlock onto active crime scenes could be called a hobby. A new feeling of contentment with my place in this city. With every bolt of adrenaline, a new sense of solidity.

Here’s what I knew about Sherlock so far: He was a smoker. He’d invented a career. He considered himself more intelligent than anyone else, and he might be right. He found relationships tedious, but he had had relationships. The police called him when they were stumped. He met potential flatmates in a morgue. He was extraordinary.

A slam sounded from the living space, startling me. I sat up. This couldn’t become a regular occurrence. Smoking I could handle, or body parts strewn in various packaging across the kitchen, but sudden loud noises didn’t settle well with me.

I left my room and walked down the stairs, yawning. “Sherlock, you have to get sleep at some poi—oh.” Two men, draped in dark jackets and looking quite frantic, were exiting Sherlock’s bedroom. I draped my arms over my bare chest. “Who are you?”

“Where’s Sherlock?” one of them demanded.

“He . . . why? Who are you?”

The one who’d spoken lunged forward, grabbing me by my shoulders and shaking me once, hard. “Is he here?!”

“He’s in his room!”

He let go of me suddenly, leaving red marks where his hands had been. “Shit,” he murmured, then to his associate he said firmly, “Go find him. Check the usual places. Bring Newman.” The man nodded and rushed out.

“Wait, isn’t . . . is Sherlock gone? Sherlock!” I called out, suddenly wide awake, rushing toward his now-open door.

“Of course he’s gone. Doctor Watson, what happened?”

At the use of my name by this stranger I turned. “Who the bloody hell are you? How do you know my name? How did you get in here?”

Peeling off his leather gloves and perching delicately on the edge of the couch, the man spoke down his nose at me. “My name is Mycroft Holmes. Sherlock’s elder brother.”

“Hang on, Sherlock has a brother?”

He continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “I’ve had my eye on him for a number of weeks, but in the last few days the change in his temperament has . . . accelerated more quickly than I anticipated.” His eyes met mine lazily, in an obvious attempt to appear casual after his prior outburst. “An amateur mistake.”

“Where is Sherlock?”

“Probably halfway to a den by now.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I muttered, “A den?” but I’d barely finished speaking before he sighed in frustration, “A drug den.”

In the moments it took for me to process this, I noticed the similarities between the two: they had the same wrinkle between their brows, the same slight down-turning of their mouths, the same long nose. Even their mannerisms were the same, a point proven even further as the man— _Mycroft_ —crossed his legs and began turning his suspended foot in tight, anxious circles.

Then, “Hang on. Is he . . .he’s an addict?”

Mycroft looked pained. “Unfortunately.”

“How long?”

“John, I hardly find it necessary to examine his entire history of—“

“Just!” I took an angry step forward, balling my hands involuntarily into fists. A sharp pain shot up my left arm and I flexed my hand, breathing deeply. Regaining control. “Listen to me. I. Do not want. Secrets kept from me like this. He should have fucking told me . . .” I trailed off, then coughed to clear my head. “I should have known about this. He should have told me. I could help him, I’m a fucking doctor!” The last sentence escaped from my mouth in an airy laugh of incredulity. At my reaction, Mycroft had raised his brows. “Are you accepting medical charge of my little brother?” he asked, to which I replied, “No. But there are things I need to know, as a doctor and as his friend.”

“Friend,” he laughed. Dry, sarcastic. Burning. “He doesn’t have many of those, does he? I wonder if he’d think as highly of you.”

I felt my mouth twitch as I clenched my jaw.

“Fine,” he said, leaning on his back against the wall in the most unrelaxing way. “His first drug was sleuthing.”

“Sorry, sleuthing?”

“Doctor Watson, you’re going to have to let me speak uninterrupted.” Raised brows, again, though this time with an air of condescension. I put my hands up in a gesture of defeat and sat in my chair, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees.

He continued, speaking slowly. Deliberately. “Sleuthing, yes. He was only eight when he solved his first murder. I of course was older, much older, and urged him to put off such activities for a few years. He never listened. The only logical choice, then, was to feed into it. He’s always been into extremes; I was either setting up mock cases for him, or I wasn’t allowed to be a part of his life at all. There’s something in his brain, something in his wiring that gives him an extreme attentiveness to detail, to memorization. He and I were always so similar in that, although I eventually learned to conceal it when it was appropriate to keep it hidden—a skill which Sherlock never acquired.

“He tried drugs before he tried smoking. I don’t know exactly what he took in those days, or more often than not what combination he took, but it nearly put a stop to his sleuthing. Not a year went by when Sherlock was a teenager that he didn’t end up being dragged up to the front door three or four times in the dead of night, strung out on some new cocktail. Our parents were so gentle, much gentler than I. I thought I could drain the toxins from him if I gave him enough incentive; but the harder I pushed, the further he slipped. Far too many times, we almost lost him completely.

“Then there was Victor.” He pursed his lips angrily. “Victor was Sherlock’s favorite drug, and his most dangerous. The two would disappear together for days or weeks on end, then turn up suddenly in their dormitory at Sydney Sussex. I became Sherlock’s primary contact, so the school would be able to call me in to pick him up for a detox. It was such a stress on mummy, and even more on our father. He always was the more sensitive of the pair.

“When Victor dropped suddenly out of Sherlock’s life, he was devastated. He became violent, dangerous to himself and to others. That’s when the . . .” his voice faltered. “The heroin came into his life. He barely finished college—passed with perfect marks, of course, but wouldn’t have gone to his exams if I hadn’t physically walked him to his classrooms. Since then it’s been a constant in his life. He has good months, maybe even a good year, but he always returns to the high. The cases, the unsolved mysteries . . . they’re never distracting enough for him. No project will ever be as good as drugs, just as no high will ever be as relieving as his first.

“That’s how he is, you know: black and white. He’ll try to convince you he’s separated himself completely from his emotions, but it’s a front. It’s a defense. He feels,” finished Mycroft, looking into his own hands. “He feels everything.”

I swallowed a lump that had grown thick in my throat. “Okay,” I said steadily, thinking back to the substance abuse training I’d received as a young doctor. “So how do we help him? How do we keep him from using again?”

At my words his expression softened into sadness. “Sherlock can’t be saved. I’ve handled his various addictions since they began. The most optimistic I’ll allow myself to be is that he might find a less dangerous alternative.”

“You’ve given up on him?”

“Given up? No. I’m thinking realistically.”

“Fuck _realistically_ ,” I said with more force than I intended. It was enough to put that look on his face again, the surprised raising of his eyebrows. “Where is he? We’ll find him.”

“I have my men looking—“

“No.” I said pointedly. “ _We_ will find him. You and me, in a car, driving round London.”

There was a tense pause between us, broken only when Mycroft stood and straightened his coat, extracting his gloves from one of the deep pockets. “I’m impressed,” he said, a smile touching his eyes but not his mouth. His tone bordered on a bite when he spoke. “With a . . . friend like you, maybe there’s hope for him yet.”


	10. Chapter 10

**MYCROFT**

I told Watson more than he needed to know, _definitely_ more than Sherlock would have preferred I tell—he rarely spoke, particularly, of Victor, selecting instead to ignore it along with whatever parts of his life didn’t fit into the persona he’d so carefully constructed. He claimed that failing to acknowledge the tragedy Victor’s loss had brought him was his own lack of sentiment, but only mummy humored that ridiculous notion. In truth, he always loved being different—when the other boys in school called him an idiot, he corrected them with his IQ. When they called him a freak, he responded by quoting the various dictionary definitions of “freak” and ascribing the term instead to various activities in which they or their parents participated. When they called him a psychopath, he started calling himself a high-functioning sociopath. It was a vastly incorrect term, of course, but more fitting than _psychopath_ could ever be.

And so Sherlock, in his infinite wisdom—or, more accurately, his infinite ego—had claimed to forgo sentiment and human relationships. He buried himself instead in science and deduction and when those became too mundane, he buried himself in drugs.

Next to me John shifted in his seat. His fingers tapped an anxious rhythm on his knees. “So we’re going . . . where?” he asked, squinting against the early-morning glare on the cab windows. I hadn’t wanted to take public transportation, but when I had mentioned my reluctance to Watson he had become violent—in his mind, at least, though physically he had merely clenched and unclenched his hand.

Trying my best not to sneer at whatever was smeared on the back of the driver’s seat I replied, “My brother has many predictable hideaways. I have Bigby and Newman checking the western parts of the city. You and I will look east.”

“What if we don’t find him?”

“We will.”

“What if we don’t?”

“Doctor Watson, the only redeemable factor of my brother’s addiction is its predictability.” At his curious glance I continued. “Sherlock wants to be found. The addiction draws him out and forces him into hovels, but he always makes it home.”

He frowned. “How often do you do this? Drag him out of drug dens?”

“Too often.”

The next few minutes were silent, Watson looking out the window with his chin perched worriedly in his hand, and I in my mind running through various locations where Sherlock might have ended up. These things were so much easier when he was young; whenever he went missing he could be found in the tree-house in the yard, or in the crawl-space underneath the house with his beloved dog, or at the local police station bothering the crime scene investigators. Of course, once his interests turned from childhood games to more serious and dangerous matters, the police stopped holding him on benches in the hallway and starting holding him in locked rooms.

My phone beeped, once, from the seat next to me. _Got him. Baker Street? –LB_

I leaned forward in my seat to inform the driver, “Baker Street,” while texting my reply.

John turned to me. “He’s there?”

“Bigby’s bringing him back.”

“Okay.” He exhaled heavily, apparently having been nearly holding his breath from the stress. He asked eagerly, “So what do we do? How do we help him?”

“You keep asking that. I’ve told you, he can’t be helped. He’s been an addict his whole life. I’ve tried dissuading him, I’ve tried scaring him, I’ve tried getting him professional help, and I’ve tried—once, when he was much younger—to let him self-destruct completely.”

“What happened?”

“His heart stopped for two full minutes before the doctors managed to resuscitate him.”

“Oh.” John fell silent. The entirety of his emotional journey showed on his face and in the clenching and unclenching of his hand. Confusion: As someone who had yet to experience Sherlock’s addiction in person, he found it difficult to believe such a brilliant mind could be so easily lost in drugs. Realization: As a doctor, he’d seen more than enough people fall into the cycle of using, trying to either escape or intensify the experience of their realities. Sadness: surely he’d never met someone as brilliant as Sherlock, but his brilliance came at the potential cost of his own life. Determination: no one yet had been able to break Sherlock out of his usage. _Yet._

Then, almost painfully, understanding: as a soldier he, too, knew how powerful the draw of danger could be.

**LESTRADE**

A yawn crawled up the inside of my chest and spilled out of my mouth. I’d left my phone on Clarity’s main table, not wanting to accidentally lose it amongst the clutter. Outside, car tires squealed from the street below. “What time is it?” I said as I stood and stretched, feeling my neck and back pop, and when Clarity ignored my question I tiptoed through the piles to check my phone. The screen lit up, revealing three texts from Mycroft. I groaned aloud. “Shit. Sherlock’s gone missing again.” Then, reading the next, “Oh. They found him.” Finally, the third, announcing that he’d been brought home and tested. “Clean,” I murmured to myself, relieved.

That caused her to look up from her notebook, over which she’d been poring. “Missing? Is it drugs?” When I nodded, she pursed her lips. “Hmm. Addiction is common for people with psychic abilities, especially if they ignore what they can do.”

I tapped a quick reply to Mycroft and tucked my phone away in my pocket. “You still think that’s what Sherlock is? A psychic?”

“I know he is. A long time ago I heard rumors about him rumbling through the psychic network. A few spirits even claim they’ve spoken to him.” She rubbed her eyes, which were darkened significantly by purple circles from her lack of sleep. “All the signs are there. It’s pretty egotistical to claim himself as a genius or whatever when his success is really due to his interdimensional connections.”

My next thought, I spoke carefully. “Don’t you think he’d know if he had an . . . interdimensional connection?”

“Not necessarily. Some people say it comes to them like an instinct. They don’t even have to work for it. Unlike the rest of us,” she muttered resentfully.

“You know,” I said, biting back an amused smile, “sometimes I fancy myself a bit of a psychic.”

“Really.” Her tone was one of sing-song mock amusement.

“Yes, really!” I crossed my arms indignantly. “Sometimes I can look at a crime scene and I just know what happened. Or I cuff a criminal and can sense their mood.”

She snorted. “You’re a detective. I _hope_ you’d be able to do those things.”

“No, but what if I am a psychic? How did you know that you were?”

She sighed loudly, clearly annoyed, and set her notebook on her lap cover-up to keep her page. “I knew when I was a kid. There was this one day, when my home situation suddenly got worse than usual, and I was considering running away from home. Away from my mother. I got halfway down the street with a backpack full of supplies before my grandma showed up and told me I needed to go back. She told me that running away wouldn’t fix my problems, that they’d follow me wherever I went.”

“What does that have to do with you being psychic?”

She raised one eyebrow. “My grandma had been dead for five years.”

His eyes widened. “Oh.” Warily, he glanced around the apartment. “Are . . . are there spirits here now?”

“That’s not how it works.” She flapped her hands through the air, gesturing to the entire vicinity. “They’re not _here_ in the sense that you could be standing next to one. They exist in a different dimension. Making contact with spirits is about finding windows between our two planes, not seeing something that’s invisible.”

“But is it possible? Could a spirit come into our dimension?”

“Of course. You hear about them all the time. Hauntings, poltergeists, supposed alien encounters—that’s all spirits who are making themselves known, for whatever reason.”

A lump formed in my throat and I swallowed hard, feeling suddenly itchy. “So you’ve . . . you’ve met with these spirits, then? Spirits who’ve come back?”

“They don’t really come back, it’s more like they never left in the first place. More often than not, they have a foot in each dimension. I can’t talk to them too often; either they don’t realize they’ve died, or they’re back for a specific reason. Either way, they’re not exactly open to psychic channels. The only spirits I’ve really spoken to who can travel between dimensions are my guides, Ruth and Hiram.” She nodded to her notebook. “They help me network in their dimension, so I can give answers to people in this one.”

“How do they find those answers? Are they all-knowing?”

“Of course not. They’re just better at communicating. Don’t have to move through the physical world to reach each other, and all that. And they’re not generally as concerned with keeping secrets from each other.”

“But they keep secrets from you?”

She raised a single brow, cracking a sarcastic smile. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly know, would I? That’s sort of the nature of secrets. Besides, what kind of fun would life be if there weren’t a few mysteries?”

I laughed. “You remember that my life’s work is dispelling mysteries, right?”

She laughed too, a quick snort. “So’s mine. Sometimes I fancy myself a bit of a detective,” she said, mocking my earlier words with an impression of my voice that bordered on bastardization.

A car horn beeped outside, one long honk followed by a set of tires squealing sharply and disappearing down the road. The mid-morning sun warmed my legs where it reached me through the window. “Listen,” I said, “I should get back to my office. You should really come too, maybe give another statement. Talk about last night.”

“Fine.”

Her easy assent gave me pause. “Really? Just like that?”

She stood, brushing dust off her jeans and tucking loose hair behind her ears. “Yeah. I’m clearly meant to be involved in this case, for whatever reason. Why fight it?”

“All right,” I said enthusiastically, before she had a chance to change her mind. “My car’s on the street.”

“You’re buying me another coffee,” she said, stretching her arms in front of her and rolling her neck. “And lunch!”

I chuckled. “If you help us solve this case, I’ll buy you Australia.”

**SHERLOCK**

The shower water was hot, far too hot. I could practically feel the red streaks it splayed across my back. I considered, briefly, turning the silver knob in front of me to cool the temperature, but expelling energy for such a mundane task seemed unnecessary. I wondered: if I could will myself not to feel the hot streams coursing over my skin, would it work? Could I numb myself to my external senses?

_John had been angry._

I hadn’t used. I hadn’t even really come close. My contacts in the drug world were never more than a quick text away, but the appeal hadn’t been quite strong enough. Besides, I hadn’t brought my wallet when I’d left the flat. Dealers, even dealers I knew well, didn’t generally appreciate IOUs.

_John had been very,_ very _angry._

The shower pipes began to whine. I turned the water off and stepped out of the shower, wrapping a towel around my waist and bracing my hands on the sink. When I stared into the blurry whiteness of the steamed-up mirror, I couldn’t distinguish my reflection from everything else in the room. It was all nearly one color, all nearly one texture, all one mass of steam and light. I blended in so perfectly with my surroundings that for a few moments, it was almost easy to imagine that I had disappeared completely.

A gentle knock broke me from the reverie of my illusory vanishing. “Sherlock? Are you in there? I want to talk.”

Sliding my hand slowly across the surface of the mirror, I watched myself come slowly into view. Water beaded in the clear-ish track I left on the glass, giving my reflection a sporadically magnified appearance. “I’m here,” I replied, my voice thick in my throat from the heat of the room. Then more quietly, staring with determination into my own eyes in the mirror, “I’m here.”


	11. Chapter 11

**CLARITY**

In my opinion, the most relaxing time of day is just before noon. The lunchtime bustle hasn’t started up, the morning light is still receding into its afternoon bake, and due to some purposeful scheduling there’s a break in my regular lineup of clients. During this time, I like to make a cup of coffee and be alone with myself, either journaling or meditating or relaxing in front of the television. My late-morning me-time was a re-charging ritual I’d practiced for years.

Today, however, my reverie was interrupted by a nervous knock on the door. When I opened it I immediately recognized the young woman standing on my doorstep, wringing her hands. She’d been a client of mine for almost 5 years, coming to me a few times a year, then monthly, then reserving a weekly slot. She rarely brought an actual interdimensional venture or spiritual concern, but the advice I offered her—empty advice, I knew, but not everything needs to be advertised to a believer—seemed to bring her enough comfort to allow her some relaxation. In the days since I’d had that vision triggered by the dead man’s watch I hadn’t seen a single client, choosing instead to clear my calendar and focus on what the hell had happened in that evidence room, but as it appeared, this particular client was more determined than I was. I greeted her with a forced smile. “Hello, Amelia.”

“Hi Clarity. I hate to drop by like this, but I could really use a reading?” Her voice rose up at the end of her statement, making it a question. A habit of hers that I _hated_. It was a testament to her lack of self-confidence, which made itself apparent in the tightness of her shoulders and the cracked skin of her often-chewed lips.

I spoke gently. “I’m actually not seeing clients this week. I thought I called you.”

“No, no, you did. I just . . .” She peered past me into the apartment, which I’d finished cleaning and re-decorating over the last few days, then glanced worriedly over her shoulder. “I think I’m in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

She leaned in conspiratorially and whispered fearfully, “S-spirit trouble.”

The way I saw it, I had two choices: use some of my limited energy to help her solve whatever non-issue she’d brought me, or turn her away and risk losing a reliable client. I closed my eyes and rubbed the bridge of my nose. It had been three days since Greg had helped me find my old journals, three days since I’d made serious attempts at communicating with Ruth and Hiram, and so far all I’d managed to do was re-read the old journal entries enough to memorize them and give myself a headache trying to make contact.

Sighing, I pushed the door open. “All right,” I said. “I can give you half an hour.”

Amelia brushed past me, half-smiling with relief, so wispy that she barely moved the air when she walked by. She settled into her usual chair and placed her purse primly in her lap. “You redecorated.”

I sat in my chair opposite her and nodded. “Okay. What’s this business about spirit trouble?”

“I think I’m being followed. There have been . . . strange things happening around me lately. Things that aren’t normal.” She shivered. “I think it might be Clancy.”

Involuntarily, my nostrils flared. Clancy was Amelia’s long-time boyfriend, who’d been subduing her for years with his fists and his cutting words. He was a piece of work: alcoholic, short-tempered, too quick to use his meaty hands to win an argument. To be entirely honest, I’d sent more than my share of hexes his way. Then, last spring, he’d managed to drown himself in a puddle out back of the local pub during a particularly nasty storm. Amelia had played the part of mourning girlfriend very well, but his loss didn’t seem as tragic when she didn’t have to explain away any more black eyes. I certainly wouldn’t hold myself responsible for his death—but then, there must have been some reason I never told her about the granite rock on which I’d written _Clancy_ and held tightly underwater in a bucket during the full moon.

Some things were better off as secrets.

I swallowed a rush of anger. “What kinds of things have been happening? I’m gonna need specifics.”

“Well.” Her eyes shifted around the room, flicking anxiously from my face to the table to her hands to the walls and back. “Strange things. Dishes sliding out of the cupboards and smashing on the floor, faucets dripping spontaneously, windows turning up unlocked when I know . . . I know. . . that I locked them.” She shivered. “Can you please help me?”

“I can try.” I reached for her hands, feeling only the slightest twinge of guilt at stringing her along when I knew full well that I hadn’t been able to successfully banish a spirit in years. Usually, what people thought were ghosts were actually coincidences. I could diagnose each of Amelia’s issues with practical fixes: the dishes sliding out of her cupboard was probably a few loose nails in the wood. The faucets dripping were probably old plumbing that she hadn’t though to check since Clancy died. And the windows—well, the polite way of phrasing it was that Amelia wasn’t the most focused woman I’d met, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she’d simply forgotten to lock the windows and then worked herself into a fit thinking it was the ghost of her abusive ex.

Despite this, I pulled a thin black candle from a small drawer in the table and set it in a holder between us and lit it. Black helped ward off negativity; I would have preferred a purple one, maybe even with a homemade sigil carved into the wax, but unfortunately I had moved all my candles into storage during The Big Clean. Feeling slightly guilty that I was practically scamming her, and not even convincingly, I gripped her hands with some reservation. Even if her “spirit” troubles were mere coincidences, she could probably use some reassurance.

I closed my eyes pointedly to encourage Amelia to do the same. We sat in silence for a few minutes, until we had both relaxed into our roles, and then I spoke. “Clancy. Are you with us?”

I expected nothing. I received nothing.

“Clancy, we call upon your spirit to speak with us. Are you here?”

Again, I knew better than to get my hopes up.

“Clancy,” I called once more, “Are you among us? We wish to speak with you.”

A warm breeze curled through the room. I cracked my eyes open just enough to see the candle extinguish. Amelia’s face froze in fear at the breath-like wind brushing her cheek. “Clancy?” she whispered.

All at once, my door and window flew open, banging loudly. Amelia shrieked. I tightened my grip on her hands and put myself in her field of vision, saying as earnestly as I could, “Clancy does not wish to be contacted! He won’t bother you again, as long as you put him out of your mind! He recommends that you . . .” I paused for effect. “Buy yourself a nice dinner.” Then, eyeing her outfit, “And maybe a new dress.”

She clapped her hand to her mouth, letting out a loud sob. Before I could regain control of the supposed séance she had grabbed up her bag and was out of my apartment in a flash.

I sat back in my chair, watching the last of the smoke furl away from the candle wick. Of course there was a practical explanation: the door had hung a touch too loosely in its frame for weeks. I’d meant to call the landlady about it, but then this thing with the dead guy and Sherlock had happened. The wind had come down the hall, forcing the window open. I never kept it totally closed anyway; fresh air was always a priority for me. My candle had been extinguished by the cross-breeze.

Still, as I put the candle away and picked up a few loose papers which had scattered in the wind, I could have sworn I’d almost felt eyes on me from somewhere within the room, watching me with disdain.

**SHERLOCK**

I emerged from my bedroom to discover John and Lestrade poring over a manila folder, photos and typed documents fanned across the table like a magician’s deck of cards. John was speaking earnestly. “—no noticeable cause, then how’ve you come to the conclusion that they're connected?

“Location, the fact all the bodies were found around the same time, and their exact state of decay was too similar to be a coincidence.” He sighed. “They’re too similar to be an accident of nature.”

I closed my door loudly and walked to the end of the short hall. They looked up simultaneously. “Sherlock!” said John, clearly surprised. “I thought you were asleep?”

“I _was_ asleep. Now I’m not.”

“Did we wake you?”

“No.”

His expression was expectant, him waiting for me to elaborate, but when I raised my brows he stuttered. “O-okay.”

Lestrade strode across the room and put a hand on my shoulder, which I shrugged off almost immediately. “How are you?” he asked, his tone positively oozing pity.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you? Really?”

John cleared his throat pointedly, peering over his phone with raised brows. “Greg? Don’t push it. Please.”

“Right, fine. Yeah. We just worry about you, Sherlock.”

“We?”

“Your friends.”

I snorted.

“Fine,” he amended with exasperation. “Your . . . whatever we are to you.”

Whatever they were to me. It had become very clear from John’s conversation with me a few nights prior that “what we were” was friends, although I held nothing but reservation for such a sentimental term. Our conversation about it had been less than intriguing.

_“So,”_ he’d said once I’d emerged from the steamy bathroom after a long shower. _“What. The hell. Was that?”_

_"It's a bathroom, John. I know there isn't much space left in your mind since it's been filled with quasi-erotic pictures from magazines, but even you should know--" ___

_"Don't make jokes. Tell me what happened."_

_“To what are you referring?”_ I knew, of course. I needed him to say it, so I would know how much _he_ knew.

_“You! You left the flat, in search of . . . was it drugs?”_

My heart, to put it dramatically, had skipped a jarring beat. _“Did you speak with Mycroft?”_

_“Of course I bloody spoke with Mycroft. What the hell were you thinking?”_ He’d been breathing heavily, his anger clear both in his tone and in the way he continually balled his hands into fists and then flexed his fingers, repeating the curling and splaying motion over and over. _“No. I’m not going to yell at you.”_

_“Are you sure?”_

He’d closed his eyes to regain composure. _“What else?”_

_“What?”_

_“WHAT ELSE IS THERE, THAT YOU FAILED TO MENTION BEFORE I BLOODY MOVED IN?”_

I’d jumped at the sudden loudness of his voice. _“I . . . there’s nothing else.”_

_“You’re positive?”_

_“I’m positive.”_

His nostrils had flared. _“Last goddamn chance, Sherlock.”_

_“I swear it!”_

Finally, with that firm reassurance, he’d seemed to believe me. He’d stared me down with a look I was sure only a soldier could have managed. Then, _“Fine. Let’s talk about the drugs.”_

Reluctantly, I’d given him a list of various substances I’d tried over the years, although there were a select few I dared not admit, not even to someone as surprisingly determined as Doctor Watson—and he was Doctor Watson that night, taking my medical history and evaluating how best to “help me,” or whatever it was doctors thought they did.

Now, in the living room I shared with John, Greg threw his hands palm-up in a gesture of yielding to John’s words. “Alright,” he said. “Well then, I’m just glad you two have each other.”

“What the hell does that mean?” John asked defensively at the same moment as I said, “Shut up, Lestrade.”

“Whoa, whoa!” Lestrade laughed. “I just mean, you two are clearly perfect flatmates. John’s got a natural instinct to help people, and Sherlock has—“ I shot him a glare to shut down his words, which I knew would be Sherlock has a natural desire to be helped. He’d told me as much at least once a year since we’d met. Apparently feeling my look boring into his skull, he finished weakly, “Sherlock has . . . also got it. That instinct. Helping people.”

John frowned in confusion. Lestrade inhaled deeply and patted his hands awkwardly on his knees. “Right. Guess I should get going!” With a wave he rose, gathering his jacket and fishing in one of the pockets for his keys.

I closed the door tightly behind him, listening to him plod down the stairs and out onto the street. When I turned back around, John was looking at me with an odd expression. His forehead was crinkled slightly, his eyes were squinted, and he chewed nervously at the center of his bottom lip. “You will tell me, right?” he asked. “You’ll tell me if you start using again?”

A pit formed in my throat. “We’ve already discussed it.”

“I know. I just . . .” he cleared his throat, staring down into his hands. “Lestrade’s right. I worried. We all worried. You don’t exist in a void, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“What you do with your life, it affects other people. Your brother, your friends, your parents. Every action you take involves the rest of us who care about you.” He paused, choosing his words carefully. I could practically see his mental faculties working to pull together a statement. What he came up with was, “You’re not. Alone.”

I snorted. “That’s an awfully romantic idea, Doctor.”

“Promise you’ll tell me?”

My shoulders sagged forward in mock resignation. “Fine. I promise,” I said, spitting the word forcefully, “to tell you the next time I make a personal decision of this nature.” His lips rounded, closed tightly, obviously not appreciating the sarcasm, and something compelled me to repeat myself more gently. “I promise.”

“Good.” He clapped his hands once on his knees and stood, stretching his spine. “Then we should head out.”

“Out? Where?”

“With Mike? For drinks?” He rolled his eyes and sighed loudly. “Sherlock, we talked about this twice yesterday. We’re meeting Mike in . . .” he checked his watch. “Twenty minutes.”

I thought of the prospect: in a bar, with John and Mike, making small-talk about . . . whatever it was Mike liked to discuss—I’d barely listened to a word he’d said since we’d met. The fact he still hung around me was appalling, even to me. However, I had yet to see John in any state of inebriation, and there were always a number of unknowns about a person that only mouths loosened by alcohol would reveal. A dastardly trick, maybe, but one which, if John were to enter into of his own accord, would grant me a slight advantage without what one might call “a guilty conscience.” My deduction skills were, after all, only so strong.

I rolled off the couch and sprang to my feet, nearly toppling John over in surprise at my quick movement. He stumbled backward and hit the back of his knee against a chair. “I’ll get dressed,” I said, already rushing down the hall to my room.

“I’ll get a cab,” he called after me.

If the current case of the dead men wasn’t going to offer any solution—which, as the last 48 hours had confirmed, it wasn’t—then I might as well make an effort to discover more about the less-ordinary-than-usual John Watson.


	12. Chapter 12

**LESTRADE**

Even with all my years of experience, I never thought finding a body would be something to celebrate.

I was notified by one of my officers just after breakfast—a frantic call had come in from someone nearby, only several blocks away from the Yard—unfortunately timed, as I’d been out of the office to get coffee and a bagel with Clarity when my phone rang with the news. She had spent the better part of a week trying to convince me to let her back in the evidence room. I made my apologies, excused myself, and dropped a few bills on the table. Clarity texted me moments after I’d left: _Did you even look at the money you left? Six pounds isn’t enough to cover the tab. Next one’s on you! ;) –CC_

I arrived at the scene quickly enough that I was the third person there. Well, fourth, if I were to include the cadaver. He fit the profile of the others: male, appearing to be about in his sixties, in a state of unshaven-ness that suggested he was homeless. No wallet, no ID, no mobile.

Standing above him I clapped once, sharply. “Right. Who found him?”

One of my officers gestured with her head toward an elderly man sitting hunched on the curb. “Mr. Tilley, from that drugstore you like.”

“Tilley? The one with the . . . ?” I gestured to my teeth. The man in question had an incredibly distinct smile. She nodded with a raised brow. Consulting my watch I said, “I’ll call Sherlock. Might be able to convince him to come over and take a look.”

Her face fell into a frown and she pursed her lips. “Sir, with all due respect, this is a very serious matter.”

“Sherlock’s a very serious man.” At her expression I amended weakly, “Well. He’s . . . a man.”

“Just don’t let some fantasy interfere with our investigation, all right? You’re brilliant, Greg.” She touched my elbow sympathetically. “You could do this on your own.” Without allowing me time to respond she walked away, scribbling something on a notepad and calling out for the witness to join her.

“Fantasy?” I grumbled aloud to myself. “Since when is utilizing quality resources a fantasy?” I unbuttoned my jacket and put my hands on my waist, tapping my fingers against my hipbones. I knew I was a good detective; hell, I’d even been called great a few times. However, even I recognized the necessity of a mind like Sherlock’s in a difficult case. If this were a simple robbery or anything else that didn’t include such a high level of mystery, I would have it solved already. A “nothing” case. Problem was, it had been the better part of a month and we still had no real leads. Clarity’s vision or whatever she’d had was the closest we’d come to any kind of clue.

To put it bluntly, without Sherlock helping us catch all the tiny details, we were shit out of luck.

“Damn it all.” Pulling my phone aggressively from my pocket, I ticked out a text to Sherlock. He responded swiftly to assure me he was on his way.

Mr. Tilley was seated on a curb near a bus terminal. According to his statement, he’d been waiting for the 6:13 a.m. bus to the other side of London to visit his sister when he’d tripped over a rise in the sidewalk. His wallet and mobile had flown out of his hands when he fell. When he’d searched through the tall grass in the dip of land behind the terminal, he’d found the body. “Lying there, eyes closed, like he was sleeping,” he told me. “I thought he was sleeping at first, but when I shouted at him and he didn’t move I .realized he was . . . he must be . . .” He swallowed, his face paling. “How long’s he been there? Dead?”

“We don’t know,” I said. “We have to examine the body. Here.” I pulled a card from my pocket: the business card of a therapist who worked closely with the Yard. She was fantastic at helping people deal with trauma like this. “If you need to talk, give her a call.” Seeing the shakiness in his hands and his inability to focus his eyes on her name and number, I added, “We’ll cover any costs.”

He nodded weakly.

By the time Sherlock waltzed onto the scene, Mr. Tilley had already been taken by one of my officers to get coffee and a crowd of onlookers stood huddled in the bus terminal, pretending not to be nosy and failing wonderfully. They whispered amongst themselves and drew in every person who passed by until the terminal was so full that the clear fiberglass began to steam with the heat of their bodies contrasting the chilly early-autumn air.

Sherlock glanced at them with disdain as he approached me. “Details.”

“Male, sixties, same profile as the others. Found at approximately 6:10 this morning by Mr. Tilley.”

“With the teeth?”

I nodded.

“Where’s Mr. Tilley?”

“Getting coffee with Gibson.”

“And the body?”

I led him through the tall grass, which had been cordoned off with yellow tape—something that drew the phones of the onlookers out of their pockets. I always hated people taking pictures at potential crime scenes and spreading them across the internet; it made it so much more difficult to control what information got out and which rumors were spread.

The body was new, in no recognizable state of decay. The clothing was intact and dry, the skin was dirty and slightly sunburned but hadn’t yet turned that deathly white, and the hair—both on his head and face—was unkempt but lay naturally, as if he were sleeping. Just like Mr. Tilley had said.

Sherlock knelt next to the body, murmuring deductions as he always did. “Smoker. He’s seen some violence . . . scarring on the arm, neck, left side of his face. Shrapnel?” He leaned in, pulling open the man’s jacket and lifting the shirt to inspect his abdomen. His fingers pressed into the flesh of the stomach. “Fresh, very fresh.” Sherlock’s face furrowed into a frown. “His death is recent. The body hasn’t even begun to—“

Before he could finish, the man groaned weakly and his hand jumped in the grass, arcing a spray of dirt and fallen leaves through the air and sending Sherlock sprawling backwards in surprise. Sherlock gasped audibly, his mouth falling open. I started as well, stumbling forward. “Oh my god. He’s alive!” I pulled my walkie out of its holster and fumbled for the talk button. “I need an ambulance here right now! Immediately!” I hauled myself out of the grass to flag them down when they arrived. “Sherlock!” I shouted over my shoulder. “Take a pulse! Keep him alert!”

Sherlock was sitting, frozen, where he’d fallen backwards. His eyes were as wide as I’d ever seen them, and the color had drained from his face. “HIS PULSE!” I yelled again. “NOW!”

With what looked like great effort, he scrambled onto his hands and knees and placed two unsteady fingers on the man’s neck, shaking back the sleeve of his long coat to keep an eye on his watch. “Faint,” he shouted, to which I repeated, “KEEP HIM ALERT!”

The crowd of onlookers were talking loudly, some of them crying, when I barged through. “Get back,” I said, motioning with a sweep of my arms for them to move away from the terminal. “Make room for emergency services!”

One man shouted, “What’s happening? What’s going on?” The question echoed itself through the collection of people.

I could already hear the sirens wailing from a few streets over. “We can’t give you any information at this time,” I said.

What I really meant was, _I don’t have a goddamn clue._


	13. Chapter 13

**JOHN**

For the third time in one week, Sherlock and I went to meet Mike. Our usual evening drinks had turned, at Mike’s suggestion, into brunch. “I can’t keep staying out late,” he’d said, with bags under his eyes. _“Let’s do something early next time.”_ Despite our mid-morning plans, we’d barely been out for two hours when Sherlock leaned his head back against our booth and declared loudly, with a slight slur in his voice, “I believe I’m drunk.”

Mike laughed mid-sip, a low hiss into the glass that caused some of his beer to sputter up onto his nose. “Of course you’re drunk,” he said, wiping his face on his sleeve and gesturing clumsily to the tabletop full of empty beer glasses. Among them were scattered a small grouping of pulp-streaked flutes from the mimosas we’d ordered. I’d only drank one, and then a couple of beers on top of that when the orange pulp had disgusted me too much to order another, but I was feeling quite foggy, and the other two were swaying happily in our booth.

I widened my eyes to rid them of their slight blur, and checked my watch. Not even lunchtime on a weekday and we were smashed.

The booth shifted under me and I felt Sherlock’s head slump onto my shoulder, his curls brushing my chin. I patted his cheek absently.

“Mike,” I said thickly as the bubbly pressure of the beers worked its way into my throat for a stifled burp, “this has been. . . it’s been so much fun.” He grinned and raised one of the empty glasses to cheers. “But we should go,” I continued, “or else he’s gonna fall asleep right here.”

Sherlock nodded in agreement, his face twisting so his nose dug into my shoulder.

With a serious expression, Mike nodded as well. “Tha. . . that’s a good plan. I’ll call a cab for you. I should walk. S’not far.”

Sherlock’s head lolled. The tip of his nose pressed harder into the joint between my shoulder and my collar; my bullet wound twinged. “Ouch!” I hissed, and shifted involuntarily away from the contact. Almost immediately, Sherlock’s fingers closed around my wrist. “Sorry,” he muttered.

By the time I had half-hauled Sherlock out of the pub, the cab was idling outside. We said our farewells to Mike, stumbled into the backseat, and Sherlock wiggled his fingers at the cabbie as he said, “221 Baker Street, if s’not too much trouble.” Then his head dropped back onto my shoulder, where it stayed for the remainder of the trip, with Sherlock sighing loudly through his drunkenness every few minutes.

Figuring I’d get everything sorted to prevent an awkward fumbling of cash outside the flat, I pulled out my wallet before we turned onto Baker Street and began sifting through the bills arranged neatly inside. The cabbie eyed me in the mirror, then glanced at his fare clock. “I’m guessin’ it’ll be about 15 pounds, mate,” he said. I nodded my gratitude and extracted two tens.

Suddenly, Sherlock’s hand closed over mine, crumpling the bills against my palm. “I’ll get it.”

“S’fine, I’ve got the money here—“

He shook his head aggressively, so his curls bounced. “On me.”

I shrugged. He was a difficult man to argue with sober, let alone with both of us still feeling quite drunk.

Sherlock scooted forward so he sat on the edge of the seat. His long coat rode up behind him with untypical inelegancy. “This will be free,” he exclaimed.

“S’cuse me?” The cabbie glanced over his shoulder with raised eyebrows. “I said I think it’ll be about 15 pounds.”

Raising a finger, Sherlock shook his head. “Free,” he said, “or I’ll call Malcolm and tell him about a certain ambassador who’s been frequenting your services.”

The car slowed suddenly; the driver had taken his foot off the gas pedal. “Excuse me?” he said again, but quietly, angrily.

“Malcolm won’t be the only one interested, though, will he? I know—” he paused, counting slowly and messily on his fingers— “probably. . . twelve-ish people who’d want to talk to you. Big. . . government people. Whiskey makes me less eloquent,” he noted to me.

The cab slammed to a full stop, and the driver turned angrily in his seat, jabbing a finger toward us. “Listen, I don’t know who the hell you are—”

“I’m Sherlock Holmes!” Sherlock interrupted, with an expression of complete offense. “What do you mean you don’t know me? Everyone knows me! And this is my. . . this. . . is John Watson!”

“John Watson,” I confirmed, nodding. The motion made me dizzy and I swallowed hard to quell the nausea.

The cabbie didn’t acknowledge that I’d spoken. “Get out,” he said.

“Fantastic idea,” Sherlock chirped in response. He grabbed a fistful of my sleeve and pushed the door open, pulling me with him as he spilled onto the mouth of Baker Street in a blur of arms and trench-coat-hem.

As the cab screeched away, I closed my eyes, absorbing the situation. “Did you—hang on, did you just blackmail a cabbie to get us out of paying 15 pounds?”

“Of course. Keep up.” He stumbled down the street, toward 221.

I trailed behind him. “Sherlock, I can afford 15 pounds!”

“It’s alright, John, I needed to contact that cabbie this week anyways. Lucky he was our driver.”

“Why?”

He fumbled with his keys as we approached the flat. “Hmm?”

“Why did you need to contact him?”

“Oh. Malcolm already knows what he’s done. Mycroft, too, I imagine. S’only a matter of time until he’s arrested for treason.” He hesitated for a moment before sliding the key into the lock, and then struggled to turn it.

“Who’s Malcolm? Hang on, treason?!” I repeated, but at that moment the key turned smoothly in the lock and Sherlock popped the door open. “Aha!” he announced triumphantly, and shoved the door, gesturing for me to enter first.

“Who’s Malcolm?” I asked as he rushed two steps at a time up the staircase. “What the hell just happened?” I called out as he opened the door to the flat. “It’s like talking to a brick wall,” I muttered to myself—although, as always, I followed him.

**SHERLOCK**

Even in my drunken state, I had noticed that something was off as soon as we arrived at the flat. The lock bore a number of new scratches, and my key didn’t fit as neatly as usual—it had recently been picked, and not picked well. In the back of my mind I heard John calling after me as I swept up the stairs, but I was already sobering as I reached the top. The door to the flat was wide open, and the light inside was on. Automatically, my mind ran through a basic combat sequence; my fists curled of their own accord as I peered around the corner, then relaxed into loose balls. “Lestrade. What are you doing here?”

He stood, crossing his arms. “I’ve been calling you all morning!” I took in his disheveled look: eyes ringed red from stress-rubbing, hair sticking out at odd angles from running his fingers through it, the carpet around him bearing neat circular tracks from pacing. “You broke in.”

“You wouldn’t answer my calls.”

“Phone’s dead. You scratched the lock.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t exactly have a standard everyman’s lock, do you?”

“That wasn’t my choice. Mrs. Hudson was tired of criminals showing up unannounced. Had to get something more difficult to pick. I’ll have to complain to the company; their products can’t be any good if someone as simple as you managed to—”

Stepping forward and raising a hand to interrupt me, he said, “Listen. This is important.”

“I’m sure,” I interrupted with as dry a tone as I could manage. John appeared in the doorway. “Oh,” he said, surprised. “Hello, Greg.”

“I’ve been calling all morning,” Lestrade repeated.

John frowned and extracted his phone from his pocket. “Must have had the volume off,” he muttered.

I sighed pointedly. “We’ve only been out for a few hours. Hardly long enough to put out a pissing merson’s report.”

Lestrade frowned. “. . .what?” John snorted loudly.

“No, wait.” I searched my brain. “Missing person’s.”

John moved to sit on the couch, putting his face in his hands. “Pissing merson’s,” he repeated in a whisper, chuckling.

“Oh my god.” Lestrade crossed his arms. “You’re both smashed.”

“Just a little,” I confirmed.

He rubbed his eyes. “I. . .I can’t deal with that right now. Will you come to the hospital?”

“Hospital? Why?”

“Because—as you would know if you’d answered any of my calls— he woke up.”

“Who.”

“Jesus, Sherlock, who do you think?! The victim! He’s awake! We can’t get him to say much yet, but I was hoping you’d be able to—”

“When?”

“A few hours ago.”

John frowned and opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off. “Coffee, John. Black.”

Lestrade shook his head. “I’ll buy you some on the way. You’ve kept us waiting long enough.”

“Fine.” I sniffed. The air was thick, fresh, and tingling with energy. It was going to rain. I guessed we had about an hour, maybe 90 minutes, before it hit. Assuming traffic was normal, it would take us 17.5 minutes to get to the hospital; add in a stop for coffee and, barring any long lines, that pushed it to 21 minutes.

A niggling thought in my mind: this is not important. Don’t waste space in your mind. Jumping down from the chair, I gauged the remnants of my drunkenness. The announcement of such significant progress in the case had sobered me significantly. I brushed a piece of lint off the front of my jacket and swept to the door, opening it and gesturing to let Lestrade and a rather confused John walk ahead of me.

“Great,” said Lestrade. “I’m glad you’re playing along nicely for once.”

Grinning, I rapped the door excitedly with my fingers. “A supposed serial killer botches one of his murders and leaves the victim alive? He’s either a very bad killer or a very clever man." I paused to burp into my hand. It tasted like citrus and rye toast. "Either way, I wouldn’t miss this for the world. What a game!”

**CLARITY**

For the second time in three days, a client showed up to my apartment unannounced. I’d just arrived home from breakfast with Greg—in fact, I’d barely hung my coat on its hook and kicked off my shoes—when there was a knock on the door. It turned out to be some guy, a portly man I’d never seen before. He apologized profusely for the intrusion. “I know it’s unconventional, my showing up here without an appointment—” he paused. “Is. . .is it unconventional? I’ve never seen a psychic before.”

I gave him a tight-lipped smile. “It’s fine. But please do call first, if you ever return. What sort of help are you looking for?”

In one rushed breath he said, “I’ve been. . . seeing things. People. Dead people.”

Sympathetically, I nodded. Poor guy looked. . . well, looked like he’d seen a ghost. “It’s more common than you think. Can you give me the details?”

Despite his shaky voice and occasional babbling, I got the drift: he’d recently moved into a new place, an old house which had been split into a number of tiny apartments. “Just a bed, kitchenette, and washroom. Don’t need much space. It’s just me there.” On his first night there, he’d suffered from a terrible nightmare from which he couldn’t wake himself; a young woman had stood in the kitchenette, leaning over the counter, sobbing. “Not very pretty,” he noted, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep myself from rolling my eyes at the unnecessary detail.

The next night, it had been the same thing. And the next night, and the next. The dream repeated itself for two full weeks until, finally, he’d decided to stay awake through the night. However, despite the fact that he was quite sure he hadn’t fallen asleep, she’d appeared just the same. After that encounter he’d set up a video camera, and had caught clear footage of her; on the tape she appeared suddenly, cried for a while, and then disappeared just as quickly.

To be honest, it was the most convincing footage I’d seen. Almost _too good._

“This isn’t doctored?”

At my words, his face fell. “You think I’m a fake.” It wasn’t a question.

“No! No. It’s just. . . well. While it’s not unheard of for a spirit to make itself apparent like that, in the form of a solid body, it’s a little rare for it to come through so clearly. I mean, I could see the wrinkles in her dress. I could see her stray hairs. A spirit coming through with that level of solidity. . . that’s something I haven’t ever seen. That’s a whole new class of apparition.” It’s impossible, I wanted to say, but my mind flashed to the journal entry that Greg had helped me find so recently. I’d read and re-read it so often in the days since that I practically had it memorized: _“Anything you sense that at first seems impossible is either a cross-wiring of psychic connections, or a symbol. To remember: there is nothing that happens in a vision that can be written off. At some level, they always contain some semblance of reality.”_

I tapped my chin and wondered aloud, “I wonder, would she appear to me? If her spirit’s attached to the room, she might. Hmm.”

“So. . . what? You want to stake out my flat?” He held his palms up in defeat. “That’s fine. I’m a desperate man. I’ll try anything.”

I thought about it. I hadn’t seen a spirit—an actual spirit—in years. A lifetime, it seemed. Even after my encounter with the dead man’s watch at the Yard, I hadn’t been able to make contact or bring about any more psychic visions. This video footage, however, was either real, or it was fake. If it was the latter, there couldn’t be any harm in checking it out. However, if it was real, and if the spirit appeared to me. . . well. The mere thought of contact with the other dimension had my skin prickling, bringing an involuntary smile to my lips and sending a pleasant prickle up my back and into my neck, like a finger running smoothly up each vertebra. Like an electric frisson to the spinal column.

Like a high.


End file.
